Profile

I now live in Cambridge with my husband and three cats.  Though I really miss having a dog! I enjoy role-playing and strategy video and board games, science fiction and fantasy books/TV, hiking, and horseback riding.  The thing I miss most about my home in the USA is the mountains.

Before I became a research scientist I thought I would become a large-animal veterinarian or a wildlife biologist.

My work involves using statistics and machine learning on large amounts of DNA data (called “genomics”) from hundreds of patients to better understand who is at the greatest risk of getting cancer, or who could benefit from a different type of treatment. This means I spend most of my time at a computer, these days with one of my cats.  I do some coding to create applications to help me in my work, and make a lot of graphs and charts to better explain what I find to other people.

I might get up at 530 in the morning to feed my cats and exercise.  I sit down to my computer by 8AM to start work.  On a typical day I might spend several hours learning a new skill in order to look at my data differently, or come up with a creative way to look at old data.  On other days I may spend the morning reading scientific papers to understand what other people are doing, and try to do the same thing with my own data later.  I try to go for a walk every day around lunchtime though, otherwise I will spend too much time sitting!