5. Who I am
Lecturer in the Department of
Biology University of York
Biologist
Passionate about reproducible
data analysis
Data enthusiast
To people who do not see
themselves as programmers
Teacher
Embedded reproducibility
across curricula
Champion
7. "Nobody wants to learn
to code. They just want
to kick ass."
James Long
rstudio::conf 2019
Putting empathy in action Building a 'community of
practice' for analytics in a global corporation.
8. Feedback
“I never in a million years thought I'd go from learning sod all
about maths and programming to getting on as well as I do.”
“Her enthusiasm carried through to me - I just never
imagined I'd get so excited about data analysis!.”
“you teach stats to biology students, which has got to be the
hardest lecturer job out there”
Who I am
9. What I do
Royal Society
of Biology
Biochemical
Society
useR
R Forwards
12. Where
1. Focus on BBSRC White Rose Doctoral
Training Partnership in Mechanistic Biology,
150 students
2. Cohort-based training provides an opportunity
for low-barrier training
13. Where
Fellowship would fund
a. me to provide workshops at existing events
b. travel to WR universities to provide follow-up
training and mentorship
c. A programme for community of practice events at
WR institutions
14. CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo,
including icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik.
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Where?
Target PhD students.
lower barriers.
Embed good practice
in labs
03
Who?
Sustainable
software
enthusiast
01
What?
Habit of giving
workshops
02
Summary
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27. At the start of the session.
“I will enjoy data analysis”
And at the end of the session
Who I am
28. Mercury is the closest planet to
the Sun and the smallest one
in the Solar System—it’s only a
bit larger than our Moon
Venus has a beautiful name
and is the second planet from
the Sun. It’s terribly hot, even
hotter than Mercury
UPCOMING
EVENTS
MERCURY VENUS
Despite being red, Mars is a
cold place, not hot. It’s full of
iron oxide dust, which gives
the planet its reddish cast
JUPITER
FEB 27 MAY 13 JUN 10
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30. Here is where your presentation begins
ABSTRACT BUSINESS
MEETING
31. SNEAK PEEK
Neptune is the farthest planet
in our Solar System. It’s the
fourth-largest by diameter and
the densest
32. CHECKLIST
Mercury is the closest
planet to the Sun
TASK 01
STRATEGY
01
STRATEGY
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Despite being red,
Mars is a cold place
TASK 02
TASK 03
TASK 05
TASK 04
TASK 06
33. If you want to modify this graph, click on it, follow the link, change the data and replace it
KPI
DASHBOARD
OUTREACH
BUDGET
New offices
95 More
employees
1,000
Earnings
Expenses
Investments
35. Who I am
To people who do not see
themselves as programmers
Teacher
Embedded reproducibility
across curricula
Champion
Editor's Notes
In these 6 minutes we have together I’m going to tell you a little about my unconventional route to being a biologist, coder and data enthusiast.
How I teach in my institution and much more widely, to cultivate more sustainable software practices and the empathy I have for reluctant coders.
And what I hope to achieve in embedding open and sustainable software practices in biology laboratories through training ECRs and how the fellowship would support that.
Now this is the normal route to an academic career. Progression through school education, their undergraduate and research degrees, a series of post-docs until finally, they get a lectureship. Their first experiences may be some distance from their experience as a learner.
My journey was bumpier...
I did get some GCEs, just about, but no a levels. I left school and had a period of homelessness before co-founding a WholeFood Cooperative in Sheffield and later becoming a warehouse manager. In my late twenties I did an access course to get on to a Biology degree and encountered computers for the first time. I did a masters in computational biology took what I expected to be a short term contract to teach on that programme. I thought before long, all biologists would have these skills. But they don’t, so I’m still here!
My teaching is focused around the teaching reproducible data analysis to people who do not see themselves as statisticians or programmers but as biologists, chemists or medics and I have had a transformative effect on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes first introducing statistical programming in R in 2004.
I teach all sorts of people undergraduate students from first year to fourth year integrated masters level, postgraduate, early career and established researchers through my work at the University of York and more widely.
However, something they in common
Is that Nobody wants to learn to code, they just want to be good at biological research.
In fact
Outside of my university teaching I regularly run workshops for learning software skills.
I provide Continuing Professional Development workshops on Reproducibility in R for the Royal Society of Biology in R and in Python for Biochemical Society.
I gave one of the tutorials at the premier international R conference, useR2019 in Toulouse, France
I was awarded an RForwards grant for $2500 to support “Impact from coding and package
development for women and other underrepresented groups”
I am actively involved in the promotion of equality, diversity and inclusion externally as member of R Forwards, the R Foundation’s International taskforce on women and other under-represented groups and was on the useR! 2019 Code of Conduct Committee.
I’m also the project lead in developing an app for learning R which is designed by early learners by learners.
And have undertaken Instructor Training course for the Carpentries delivered by SSI Training Team Aleksandra Nenadic and lead met with Software Sustainability Institute Fellows who were enthusiastic about the programme and encouraged me to apply.
I’d like to be able to target more specifically early career scientists and in particular PhD students.
Many undergraduate degrees courses in the life sciences provide training in data analysis and programming. These equip individuals to implement programming-based solutions to scientific problems but rarely to professionally document and disseminate their code.
And these are exactly the skills needed to develop a culture of making analyses reproducible and software sustainable from the outset. Thus, every new student must reinvent the wheel in that lab rather than build on the previous analyses.
In the first instance I want to focus on the BBSRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership in Mechanistic Biology. This is a programme run jointly between The Universities of Leeds, York and Sheffield trains about 150 students over a five year period. It’s programme I know well.
A strength of this programme is the existence of cohort-based events which students from all universities attend.
This creates an opportunity to provide workshops to train students in sustainable software practices such as project and data organisation, documenting and publishing code and code collaboration.
Holding these around existing events lowers the barrier for engagement.
The fellowship would fund my travel to events and any costs associated with putting on a workshop for the entire cohort at the Event venue.
The provision of several follow-up satellite training workshops to consolidate main events and provide mentorship.
A programme to which a group of students can apply to run their own series of events for developing a community of practice
So in summary, I am a passionate teacher of sustainable software skills with a habit of delivering workshops who would use the fellowship to provide training and mentoring to PhD students with low barriers for engagement to help build sustainability into biology labs.
They often do not expect to enjoy data skills at all. However, I my enthusiasm for software skills and the empathy I have for beginners helps motivate them.
I’m passionate about the ability of software to create reliable, reproducible and more efficient science and try to infect the people I teach with this enthusiasm.
My teaching is focused around the teaching reproducible data analysis to people who do not see themselves as statisticians or programmers but as biologists, chemists or medics and I have had a transformative effect on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes first introducing statistical programming in R in 2004.
