I am a doctoral student looking to graduate in the next year. I have years of background in hands-on, cognitive neuroscience research (fMRI, EEG), and have done everything from running participants to writing up the manuscript. However, my favorite part of the process is working with the data.
In my role as a scientist, most of my work satisfaction comes from taking the raw collected data and transforming it into processed, ready to analyze information – the rest comes from the actual analyses. I have spent lots of time coding in Python, Matlab, R, and the bash shell. I’ve also used several different types of tools from the neuroimaging (e.g., SPM, Nilearn, BrainIAK) and data science fields (e.g., NumPy, SciPy, pandas).
Being a graduate student means I’m largely self-taught – I receive guidance from my advisor, but I’m in charge of my own research. I’ve had to teach myself several new skills while working on my dissertation, and it’s been a fun journey! For example, I’m good at dissecting academic material in order to extract what I need, and I’m confident that I can look at code and figure out how it works. I can be autonomous, if necessary, but I also enjoy team-based environments.
I’m looking for an career where I can be involved in hands-on data processing and analysis, hopefully in the context of research. Neuroimaging is a plus, but I’m flexible.