I’m a microbiologist who was trained as an engineer. I’ve always been interested in the quantitative side of science. Although the material can take practice to master, I have enjoyed learning how to use computational tools to enable greater reproducibility of my data analyses. I first learned R by using a script I found for generating a plot and modifying it slightly to visualize other data. With time and practice, I’ve found it to be a very powerful language that I’ve used to analyze everything from baseball to microbial ecology data! I also enjoy working with people who are starting their journey with tools and seeing them get to the “aha” moments where they are able to translate what we do in a workshop to their own research.

When I’m not analyzing data or teaching, I enjoy working with my family on our farm where we raise pigs, sheep, cows, and chickens. Yes - I even use the skills from Software and Data Carpentry to analyze my farm data!