About

a little bit more about my current role and past experiences


Data Training Program Manager


I’m currently the Data Training Program Manager at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Learning Hub. My role is to manage, maintain, and develop NCEAS’s growing data science training portfolio and coordinate and conduct training sessions.

My primary goal is to empower researchers and environmental professionals to incorporate data science tools when working with data, aiming to help them build reproducible, collaborative, and efficient data workflows.

I’ve taught workshops on introduction to R and RStudio, literate analysis with Quarto, Git, and GitHub, cleaning and wrangling data, data visualization with ggplot2, performing text analysis in R, working with spatial data in R, introduction to Shiny, Quarto dashboards, and accessing census data with the tidycensus R package.


Data Science/Research Experience

I’ve worked on a wide range of research projects in the past. Below, I highlight relevant accomplishments.


Data Manager for the Palmyra Atoll Data Library (PADL)

I helped mobilize data from “researchers’ computers” to an open data repository, the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI). To successfully achieve this, I had to do quality checks on data sets and transform them to comply with FAIR to the extent possible, and I systematized the process for documenting and producing detailed metadata.


Research Data Scientist
  • Project: North Coast Urchin Trapping

Analyzed and visualized urchin monitoring data to evaluate effective urchin removal methods.

  • Project: West Coast Synthesis of Climate Impacts on Marine Fisheries

Systematized and digitized California’s historical fisheries landings data at a port level and built a dataset documenting the spatial and temporal extent of fishery closures on the West Coast.

  • Project: Synthetic Estimate of Lost Fishing Gear

Managed data describing global catch, effort, discards, and fishing gear used and analyzed and visualized data with R and ggplot2 to inform a model estimating derelict fishing gear.


Ocean Health Index (OHI) Data Science Fellow

Collaborated with the OHI team to update and format data sets necessary to calculate the 2018 OHI global assessment. During my internship, I had to revise and improve 9+ R scripts using OHI methods to ensure the required functions and data worked properly.


Education

  • MS Environmental Science and Management, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

  • BS in Biology with a focus on Ecology and Natural Resources, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), Santiago, Chile