About

A bit more about me and what I have been up to!

The Education

After getting my Associate’s Degree in Mathematics from community college, I discovered the field of data science at UCSB. I quickly grew to love the field, and was ever enamored by the insight our data is capable of telling us. Along the way, I also learned a lot about the ethics of data science, and importance of unbiased data at the point of collection. I took both of these pieces with me as a fellow for the Central Coast Data Science Fellowship (CCDSP). I sat on the outreach committee, where I got to share my new found love of data science with high school students who were not privy to this powerful field. In my final year of my undergrad, I worked with the Energy and Environment Transitions lab on campus (ENVENT) for my capstone project. A team of three undergrads and myself were tasked with analyzing how demographic variables are differentially predictive of climate change opinions, using global survey data. It was during this project that I finally discovered what I wanted to be when I grow up.

The internship

Immediately after graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Bachelor of Science in Statistics and Data Science and a minor in Feminist Studies, I took on an internship with California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI). My role in this internship was to create an interactive data storytelling tool that would inform California Coastal residents on the threat of hypoxia in our California Coastal Ecosystem. The project stemmed from the realization that California Coastal residents are not widely informed about what hypoxia and how it changes with climate change. The project heavily relied on science communication to create an interactive web based primer through “scrollytelling.” Upon finishing the primer, another intern and I started an outreach portion of the internship where we went to local high schools to inform students on the field of environmental data science. We created an activity to help the students get their hands dirty analyzing real life environmental data collected by CalCOFI!

The life outside of my computer!

I love to code, analyze, make cool visualizations, and learn about subjects I know little about through data science/analysis. But this isn’t all I do! I am a Southern California native and I take full advantage of it! I grew up mountain biking and hiking and have taken part in those activities ever since! I recently cheated on my mountain bike by purchasing a gravel bike and have since becomed hooked on road cycling and bikepacking. I have lived in Ventura County my whole life but moved to Ventura proper in 2022 and haven’t stopped biking my way between here and Santa Barbara since - the views never get old!

Over the past year, I have really picked up an interest in zero waste cooking/cooking in general. I try and make a new semi- elaborate recipe every week. I make all my own almond and oat mylk, and repurpose the almond/oat pulp to make meal, crackers, and granola (one day I want to make my own coffee cart and sell matcha lattes using my own homeade nut milks as a passion project!) ! Living in an apartment without a garden, I don’t have a way to effectively compost. Instead, I freeze all my vegetable scraps and make vegetable broth each week with them. I am planning to start dabbling in bread making soon!