Who I am.....and how I got interested in Data Science
A few lines about myself...
I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, USA. I was born and raised in a little town in Germany (Gudensberg).
I am a pharmacist who swapped the drug store for a wet lab. After graduation and a quick research stop in Cambridge, USA, I moved to Belgium where I had been accepted to the International PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences.
My projects were deeply intertwined with the newest technologies in the field of human genetics. Array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH), single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array , and 454 deep sequencing were popular at that time and the first papers using whole exome (WES) and whole genome (WGS) papers were in the making. A large quantity of data and sequence information is generated which requires a significant amount of data analysis. Things moved FAST and today, my boss employs three people who are purely "computational" ( != no wet lab work) with a group size of 15. And they have there hands pretty full.
The more I focused on my newest project with its heavy sequencing component, the more I got interested in the analysis of large data sets. Instead of asking for help with every little problem related to the "big data", I wanted to acquire some skills to help myself -- at least for basic questions to start with. My attempts to secure a spot in the Tri-I Training: Bioinformatics and Computational Methods was unsuccessful. At last, I just installed R studio, completed the Code School - Try R course, and started munging my data. AND --- I just loved it. I had always been an analytical thinker who enjoyed trouble shooting problems and this was down my ally. The big question followed quickly: "How can I get more involved?" I wanted to learn, learn, and learn, so much was sure. But how? A friend of mine who knew about my attempt told me about Data Science Fellowship programs and that it sounds like something for me. One thing led to another. I surfed the web and started reading (read actually for quiet a bit) about Data Science in general. A lot of questions had come to my mind since I heard first the term Data Science.
Python has become my favorite programming language. And I am excited about the completion of my first little side projects. I had a blast playing with Twitter and PubMed.