Two Queen Mary PhD students were delighted beneficiaries of funding to help support their data science skills this summer. Areti Papadopoulou (WHRI) and Duncan Wotherspoon (Blizard) attended a 5 week programme run by S2DS, an external organisation specialising in developing researchers to hone their experience in the ‘real world’.
Areti commented, ‘I was part of a team of 5, named team RecommendIT, with diverse backgrounds and we worked with Code Worldwide (CWW), the technology division of RAPP group, that facilitates brands from different industries to transition smoothly to the digital world.’
Duncan said, ‘My client was a research institute focused on the generation of electrical power… They wanted our team to investigate the data, aggregating into a form that allowed site-level comparisons between different sites, and to see if we spotted anything interesting in the dataset using advanced statistical techniques that they hadn’t had the capacity or technical ability to attempt thus far.’
The students were able to participate in the project through EPSRC Impact Acceleration Funding, facilitated by Dr Akram Alomainy (S&E) and Kate Murray (Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise). Both students said that the S2DS programme was ‘one of the best professional environment experiences I have ever taken part in’ and a ‘formative experience in selecting my future career and benefiting my transition from academia to industry’.
‘The experience taught me a new perspective and way of working, I think that will be valuable for the last stages of my PhD’, said Duncan. Areti agreed: ‘I learned to communicate better what I am doing to my teammates and all together to collaborate for a better outcome’.
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