🇰🇪 November 2023: Meet Pauline Karega

🔉 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – U2

🔉 Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey

What did you study?

I have a biochemistry undergraduate degree from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and an almost Bioinformatics masters degree from Nairobi University, Kenya. (Awaiting graduation) I am currently a PhD student at the University of Manchester

What is the title of your current role?

Postgraduate researcher

Give a one-sentence summary of what you do in this role

I research how best to integrate environment and health data, comparing approaches in the global north and south

How much time do you spend coding?

Approximately 4 hours

How many projects do you work on?

2 projects

Give some keywords that summarise the topics of your projects.

GIS, Sentinel, Landsat, respiratory illnesses, air pollution, health data, open data.

How often do you work with non-coding researchers?

Very often

What is their primary objective?

Outside of my PhD, I work for Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya initiative, which aims to bridge the gap between early career and established researchers by building a cohesive community. We do this by running training events, doing outreaches in different universities, and running community meetups to support bioinformatics researchers and students.

How many people in your organisation are involved in research software development (a thumbsuck is okay)?

Many are involved in the research side, addressing different genomics questions, focusing more on data analysis than software development

Which communities of practice are you part of?

Open life science, Africa’s talking, R ladies

What training has had an impact on your current career?

A datacamp data science course I took at the beginning of my masters studies

I see myself as an academic and a researcher, for now. I hope I progress to a software engineer as I progress in my career.

Given that BHKi is an NGO, lack of funds is a big barrier to the work. It limits some of the progress we would like to make as an organization, like the support we would like to offer our members. We rely heavily on people volunteering their time, which makes it difficult to achieve some goals.

For my PhD, I really enjoy working with new datasets, and finding out the story the data is trying to tell. For BHKi, I would say organizing training programs and events, and finding people to collaborate with in the form of speakers, or trainers, you meet so many new and cool people doing amazing things.

I would say funding to enable running a somewhat smooth program (given that there can be other challenges), halting operations that could create an impact because of funds kills morale.

Christmas. I just moved to a different country so it will be the first time I’m spending Christmas away from family, but I have made friends and I can’t wait to spend the holidays with them.

Be open minded, be curious, and don’t be afraid to explore. You stumble upon the best things from the most unexpected places, conversations, and people.