Research Platform Services Blog
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At a typical academic conference keynote presenters will talk about their research. While that’s all well and good, what you don’t get to hear so much about is their story. How did they get to where they are today? Why are they so passionate about what they do? We’ve picked some of the most interesting people we know in research & data science and have asked them to present a “keystory” instead. Here’s a little about each of them:
‘Finding your voice: the value of community’
Kim Doyle | @kim_doyle1
Kim is a PhD student in Media and Communications. Her thesis explores programming in journalism, aka data journalism. In her role with Research Platforms, Kim teaches the Natural Language Toolkit, a library of the programming language Python.
Before meeting and working for Research Platforms, Kim had no prior training in computer science. She learnt all her skills in the community and is full of the revolutionary zeal of the newly converted (and also prone to dramatic overstatement).
If you have any questions about web/social media scraping, textual analysis, computational linguistics or digital humanities, Kim is happy to talk your ear off. Ping her @kim_doyle1.
Nikki Rubinstein | @nikkirubinstein
PhD student, Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Research Community Coordinator Manager, Research Platforms. Nikki is your typical perpetual student type. Although she promises that once her PhD is finished, she will leave the academic bubble and explore the world beyond!
Currently in her final year, Nikki has been working on developing novel algorithms for visual field tests. These tests are used to probe the integrity of peripheral vision (or side vision) in diseases such as glaucoma.
Having immensely enjoyed scaling the learning curve to programming, Nikki loves sharing her experience and knowledge with others, and Research Platforms is the perfect platform (it’s in the name!). Nikki is passionate about creating communities around digital tools and promoting collaborative learning. Research degrees can be challenging and lonely. Let’s ease the burden by helping each other!
“From Illuminated Manuscripts to Unicode 9.0″
Lilly Ryan | @attacus_au
After embarking upon a graphic design degree, Lilly Ryan realised that her true love was medieval history, and switched courses after one year of designing posters. This led to several more years studying witches, Latin, state-sanctioned persecution, and torture, and culminated with an Honours thesis which focused on the heretic-hunting texts produced by the Catholic Inquisition in the 14th century.
In the background, Lilly was simultaneously tinkering with Linux, writing shell scripts, and learning to solder. She participated in her first hackathon less than a year after graduating with First-Class Honours in Theology, and began teaching Python through the OpenTechSchool. Although she had intended to go back for her PhD after a year in the workforce, by 2016 she had become a senior software engineer for a multinational consultancy, and had acknowledged her other true love: technology.
Lilly is now combining these two passions by running workshops and giving talks on digital security and privacy in a hyperconnected world. These topics merge her love of new tech with her knowledge of historical surveillance states. She enjoys using her knowledge of technology to help others retain their human rights while using it, and aims to bring new perspectives to a discipline which often believes history began in 1970.
“Find your inner lapidarist”
Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea | @MVEG001
Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea is a scientist and the inaugural Executive Director of the Industry Mentoring Network in STEM with the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). With over 15 years of experience leading translational medical research programs in the United States and Australia, her work has been internationally recognised with numerous awards. Dr Evans-Galea has chaired several executive committees and served with advisory groups in state and federal governments. Strongly committed to empowering early career researchers, Dr Evans-Galea regularly mentors students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty. She has developed graduate mentoring programs in the US, was founding chair of the EMCR Forum with the Australian Academy of Science and chairs the Australian Science and Innovation Forum with ATSE. An internationally recognised advocate for women in STEMM, Dr Evans-Galea currently serves on the Science in Australia Gender Equity Expert Advisory Group and is co-founder and CEO of Women in STEMM Australia. Twitter: @MVEG001
By Warda and Yamni
2016- Phew! What a year!
While the events in the past year have been surprising and lets face it upsetting on a Trumpian scale, the MATLAB team here at ResPlat have decided to celebrate our achievements.
For starters, we ran the most number of workshops we have run yet including our very first extension courses.
Summer
We started 2016 off with a bang at ResBaz. We had a diverse team deliver the first beginners workshop of the year.
Playing around with @MATLAB at #ResBaz I call this Red Veges pic.twitter.com/uS6zd40ZXj
— Karen Mickle (@MickleKaren)
February 2, 2016
Autumn
We followed it up with two more beginner’s courses, one of them dedicated especially to women in science.
Rosie watching over Matlabbers at the @MATLAB for women in science and engineering workshop. @ResPlat @WISEunimelb pic.twitter.com/Fqw6UiScGp
— Yamni Mohan (@YamniMohan)
May 2, 2016
We then had Pippa deliver the MATLAB statistical toolbox extension course:
Today we’re running our first @MATLAB extension course: MATLAB Statistics Toolbox! Looking good @pjkaroly 😊 pic.twitter.com/7CQghibaov
— Research Platforms (@ResPlat)
May 11, 2016
Our new @MATLAB course notes are published here https://t.co/WfbVhz2S56 via @GitBookIO #opensource #opentraining @ResPlat
— Pip Karoly (@pjkaroly)
May 11, 2016
Warda also ran the the medical image processing course.
Check out the success story of our Alpha course run last week. @MATLAB @ResPlat https://t.co/sXtmtur32I
— Warda Syeda (@WardaTaqdees)
July 1, 2016
Winter
As we all coped with the depressing winter, Yamni ran an image processing basics for computer vision course.
We ran an image processing using Matlab course. Read about it here :D @MATLAB @ResPlat @WardaTaqdees @EwanNurse https://t.co/Xvm356DT6w
— Yamni Mohan (@YamniMohan)
December 30, 2016
and @EwanNurse wrote and tested a MATLAB parallel processing course along with @RealDanTosello.
Spring
We finished our teaching year up with the MATLAB Go beginners course where we wrangled some Pokemon (data and otherwise).
21st century digital research tools, 19th century digs @ResPlat @unimelb pic.twitter.com/vRgJCW2kQc
— Ewan Nurse (@EwanNurse)
August 30, 2016
.@WardaTaqdees teaching conditional statements in @MATLAB using the universal language of Pokemon Go @ResPlat pic.twitter.com/7yPufulT0G
— Ewan Nurse (@EwanNurse)
August 29, 2016
We couldn’t have done any of this without our wonderful team of trainers and helpers-
Our amazing trainers were:
We also had great helpers, some of whom have told us their experiences working with the MATLAB team. Let’s meet our star champions Bowen, Sila and Sri and see how they feel about helping at Research Bazaar.
Matlab Bloggers: Hey champions! Thank you for being a part of our ResFamily in 2016. Tell us a little about yourself.
Bowen: I’m a PhD student in the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory, working on how time perception influences decision making. I collect a combination of physiological and behavioral data, and I use a range of software tools (Matlab and R mainly) to analyze this data. I find that learning about and using these tools has been the most valuable experience of my PhD.
Sila: I am doing my PhD through the Department of Paediatrics and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and my research interests are in using neuroimaging techniques to quantify white matter changes in typically developing children as they enter puberty. The research tools I predominantly use are FSL, MRtrix, and R.
Sri: I’m a PhD candidate at the department of Optometry & Vision sciences at the University of Melbourne My research interests include Retinal imaging, diabetic retinopathy, inherited retinal degenerations. My research seeks to understand the capillary blood flow behavior in normal eyes and microvascular dysregulation in diseased eyes such as diabetic retinopathy using high-resolution adaptive optics that allows imaging the living cells.
MATLAB bloggers: Amazing! It is great to see brilliant researchers from such diverse backgrounds coming together and sharing their MATLAB expertise with each other. This is what Research Bazaar is all about. So now that you’ve been with us for quite some time, how would you describe your experience as a helper?
**Bowen: **Teaching others how to write programs and think algorithmically has been very valuable in terms of my own learning and insight. The exposure to the wide range of projects researchers are working on is an excellent aid for lateral thinking and networking. The course itself is always run very smoothly, and adequately introduces people to the most important parts of coding. Ultimately, the team is always extremely insightful and helpful, and it has been a pleasure working with them!
**Sila: **I really enjoyed the experience as a helper, as the workshop was interactive and could go at the user’s pace. I particularly enjoyed talking through feedback with other helpers and discussing the positives and room for improvements for each section.
**Sri: **MATLAB workshops indulged great learning, fun and creativity. As a beginner, I have learned useful concepts and simple steps in handling MATLAB. As a helper, I was able to get closer with MATLAB in revisiting the concepts I have learned.
Others who’ve helped us out:
Akhil Raja
Asif Iqbal
Ali Qadar
Yasmin Blunck
Padma Priya
We celebrated the end of a fantastic year data wrangler style :D
We would also like to take this opportunity thank the MATLAB team and Resplat (especially, Nic, Dejan and Christina) for all the support throughout the year.Data wrangler lunch. Celebrating the end of 2016 :) pic.twitter.com/KzlTwdDNWh
— Nikki Rubinstein (@nikkirubinstein)
December 21, 2016
See you all next year. In the meanwhile, if you need any MATLAB help, email us at research.bazaar@gmail.com.
Happy New Year!
