Hello world

In the previous blog post I described my trajectory from undergraduate to PhD, which was undoubtedly a satisfactory stage with a lot of personal growth and countless academic and professional achievements. For the second entry I will share what I have experienced during the pandemic, a very difficult period for all of humanity, but one that reminds us how fragile we are like any other living species on earth.

Let's continue!

Stage 3 _{^{Pandemic and uncertainties}}

Let's start in March 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions started in most countries and coincided with the deadline for submitting my PhD thesis. Moreover, it was the month in which my sponsor's grant funds came to an end. Not having many options, my wife and I decided to leave London and return to Bogota (my hometown). Despite all possible pressures, I fulfilled the purpose of submitting my thesis on March 30, 2020, a very memorable day! Subsequently, in May 2020 I defended my thesis remotely celebrating by video call with my family, supervisors and friends. I then received my PhD degree in Geography from King's College London in September 2020.

During the period of my thesis corrections and job search I was selected in a virtual training program in data science sponsored by the Colombian government and organized by Correlation One. As part of the program, with other participants we applied what we learned in a project focused on the development of models and a data dashboard to predict recidivism in the Colombian penal system (see details here ). After, in August 2020, I became a contractor for the Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi (IGAC), a Colombian government entity known for its role in cartography and land use planning. In my 5-month contract I had the opportunity to be the technical leader of groups of 5 to 6 researchers and to publish in scientific journals results of two projects related to data science and artificial intelligence technologies for building mapping in rural environments (see details here) and digital soil mapping (see details here). I also coordinated a Correlation One data science challenge that aimed to develop predictive models from a soil database curated by IGAC (see repository here).

With the end of my contract at IGAC and not having much success in the search for options in academia, I decided to take the path of entrepreneurship. On this path, it is worth mentioning that the learning I received in an extracurricular program offered by the entrepreneurship institute of my university during my PhD was valuable. Thus, I registered GeoMagic Labs, a geolocation technology consulting company, within the Bogota Chamber of Commerce. With GeoMagic Labs I was selected in a consulting competition with Solidaridad Network, an NGO focused on facilitating the development of socially responsible, environmentally sound and profitable supply chains. In my proposal I developed a methodology for mapping coffee production systems using open access satellite images (see details here).

Opportunity 4 - Data Science Training

Data science has undoubtedly gained an important role in the different domains of knowledge with impact in all sectors. Because of this, a number of training programs and resources are available. In my case, taking advantage of the period of uncertainty and virtuality, I started looking for ways to improve my data science skills. In this way I found the Data Science for All (DS4A) programme from CorrelationOne. Sponsored by the Colombian government, this program offers 13 weeks of training open to all Colombian citizens who are interested in strengthening their data science skills and joining the growing artificial intelligence ecosystem in Colombia. To participate in the program, students must pass an admission test that evaluates general knowledge of statistics, programming and logical reasoning. The program is very interesting, as not only do you receive training, but you also have talks with professionals from industry and academia telling how they use data science in their day-to-day work. I can describe the program as basic to intermediate level with very practical examples and the possibility of working in teams to put all the knowledge into practice through an applied project proposed by government institutions, private sector or NGOs. CorrelationOne offers other training programs focused on women, empowerment, engineering, among others that are open to any nationality.

Stage 4 _{^{Open Science, May 2021 - to present}}

In November 2020 my PhD sponsor's condonation rules changed opening doors to new opportunities. It was no longer mandatory to prove that I was linked to an institution in Bogota for the time I received funding (that is, 4 years!). The new regulations were flexible with other types of deliverables including publishing articles and/or starting a small and mid-size enterprises related to my PhD topic. Under this new scenario, I applied for a postdoctoral position at the Alan Turing Institute in the UK in December 2020. I was already familiar with the Turing environment from a previous collaborative hackathon opportunity I had participated in December 2019 (see the report here). The postdoctoral position fit my profile, and I was attracted to the possibility of learning probabilistic modeling, improving skills in software development, and contributing to Pangeo, a community that promotes open science for big data analysis in geoscience.

In February 2021 I received a communication for an interview which included a 5 min presentation, followed by an explanation of code of my authorship and questions from the interview panel. It was my first postdoc interview so it was natural to be a little nervous. Nevertheless, I offered accurate answers highlighting my experience collaborating in various research groups. At the time of showing my code I managed to demonstrate how it had been used or visited in Zenodo (a platform to register any digital research object). A few weeks later I received the offer of the position starting remotely from May 2021. Later, with my wife, we left our life in Bogota and decided to restart our life in London at the end of July of the same year.

Being part of Turing, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with multiple researchers in the Uk and their networks, below are the projects or initiatives that I actively collaborate with:

• My postdoctoral project involves the development of tools based on intelligent fusion of environmental sensor data to improve the monitoring of our changing planet (see details here). In collaboration with researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Met Office we are developing a tool based on probabilistic modeling that combines data from different modalities (grid data, in situ and auxiliary stations) to have finer and more local-aware observations of environmental variables. In addition, with greedy algorithms, the tool will suggest where to install local sensors to reduce the uncertainty of the modeled environmental variable. I am fortunate to be able to contribute with my expertise in the development of the tool, in my case working with researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) to model soil moisture.
• Co-founder and leader of the Environmental Data Science book (see details here). It is a resource led by the environmental community where Jupyter notebooks are used to demonstrate advances in data, methodologies and other types of research using open source tools. Through this initiative I collaborate with other members of the Pangeo community in Europe in order to increase the democratization of scalable and open source tools for geoscience.
• Member and developer at scivision (see details here), an open source tool developed among researchers from different domains, including molecular biology, agriculture and environment, as well as professionals from the Turing Research engineering team. My role in the project is to ensure that the tool is generalizable to a variety of imagery (satellite, drones, climate data, among others) and models from the environmental science community.
• Member and co-leader of the translation team at The Turing Way, a community-led initiative to promote best practices in open and reproducible science (see details here).

Opportunity 5 - Open Science Communities and Training

Beyond improving my skills and best practices in programming for environmental applications, the last stage has allowed me to be part of and contribute to the open science community. Despite having participated in multiple research groups since my undergraduate years, I think that open science communities have the greatest potential to have a long-term impact on our society. Examples of these communities are The Turing Way and Pangeo, the first focused on a general audience and the other on the geoscience community. They are communities that promote a vision of science in which anyone can contribute to a common goal, democratizing knowledge and good practices in projects in different productive sectors. The Turing Way has a diverse communications channel (see details here), but what I advise in the first instance is to join through Slack. With nearly 400 members, this is the place where you can exchange ideas with other members and learn about community activities. During the course of the year, `book dash` weeks are organized, which are hackathon-type events in which various activities are proposed, such as proposing or reviewing online resource content, short talks on various open science topics and socializing or networking spaces among attendes. Unlike traditional hackathons, there is no competition for any prize, any contribution is part of a common celebration. Through The Turing Way, I also learned about the program Open Life Science (OLS). It is another community which offers 16 weeks training in open science leadership. I participated in the fourth cohort to validate the idea of the environmental data science book through meetings with my mentor. Later, I co-mentored a multi-language open science knowledge project in Central Asia in the fifth cohort. Both experiences were valuable, since in the first one I was able to learn the basics in leading an open science project, and later I returned what I learned through my mentoring role. I fully recommend joining OLS, they are open to any knowledge domain in which you want to practice open science.

Summary

We have completed the second entry of Alejandro 101. I am pleased to share my professional and academic development, as well as some opportunities for those interested in open environmental science and information technology.

If my content is relevant I will be publishing monthly various topics from discussions of tools (with code) as well as concepts or schemes proposed in open science, environmental or information technology topics. I will also share relevant updates of my personal life or travels that may be enriching for other readers of this blog.

For an inclusive and transparent science 🚀