About Me
The Basics
I am currently in the graduate year for my Master of Public Health in Biostatistics, so I have been living in Athens for over 4 years now. I am a Double Dawg here at the University of Georgia, and I have a bachelor’s of science in Health Promotion, which allowed me to get a head start on my MPH. I took my first biostatistics class during my freshman year, and I have been excited to learn more about this topic ever since. I chose this area of emphasis because I love combining my affinity for math with real public health problems. I really enjoy data visualization and translating findings from research studies into a format that can be understood by everyone. I hope to have a career that allows me to use my data analysis skills on projects that make a positive difference in population health.
Research Interests
I am currently on Dr. Lambert and Dr. Swartzendruber’s research team working on their Crisis Pregnancy Center map. I completed my undergraduate internship with this team, and I spent most of my time completing qualitative data collection forms and developing codebooks. I continued my work in the fall of 2023 as the co-team leader for the content analysis team, which required me to manage 6 research assistants and complete weekly quality assurance checks of the data collection surveys. I love working in reproductive health research, and I am also interested in exploring research in the antimicrobial resistance and clinical trials for drug development spaces in the future.
Data Analysis Experience
Most of my data analysis training has been hands-on with the CPC map project through using tools such as REDCap. I took the EPID 7500 elective in the fall of 2023, which gave me a great foundation for working with R studio. I also took BIOS 8110 in the same semester, which is a categorical data analysis class that allowed me to explore more advanced statistical methods. Both of these courses included a final project that required using a real-world data set to formula research questions, clean the data to answer these questions, and create a report with the findings.
Goals For The Course
I hope to become more comfortable with learning new data analysis tools using the resources provided during this course. I am often initially intimidated when it comes to learning new software and techniques, so I want to become better at adapting to new analysis tools. I am new to Github, so I am excited to create a presence in that space while learning how to utilize Gitkracken. While I have used AI tools sparingly, I am also looking forward to understanding more about how they function and how they can help me in my future career.
Fun Facts
I am a huge foodie, so I spend the majority of my day planning meals, brainstorming ideas for the next party spread, or planning vacations to hot spots with new restaurants. Some of my favorite restaurants in Athens are Last Resort Grill, Thai Spoon, and Maepole. I love watching the Dawgs play, and I think game days are my favorite time to be in Athens. One unique thing about me is that I have the same birthday as my best friend, and we have spent the past 16 years celebrating together. Something curious about me: I actually grew up as an Auburn fan because my dad went there, but I will be cheering for the Dawgs from now on.
Interesting Data Analysis Predictions
Upside is a website run by The Data Warehousing Institute with the majority of articles written by professional technology authors and some contributions from those within the data analytics community. A recently published article predicted the upcoming trends for generative AI in 2024. The most interesting prediction suggests an expansion of generative AI to support customer service with only meager large-scale investments in AI due to data security concerns. Additional topics discussed in the article include data lakehouses, Microsoft Fabric, and cloud analytics. I find the new platforms and companies involved in each of these data analysis topics to be really interesting because involvement in AI seems to be the hottest topic in current events recently.