Data Champions Search

Florian Markowetz is a Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. He is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder and received a CRUK Future Leader in Cancer Research prize. He holds degrees in Mathematics (Dipl. math.) and Philosophy (M.A.) from the University of Heidelberg and a Dr. rer. nat. (PhD equivalent) in Computational Biology from Free University Berlin, for which he was awarded an Otto-Hahn Medal by the Max Planck Society. His group at the CRUK Cambridge Institute combines computational work on cancer evolution and image analysis of the tumour tissue with experimental work on understanding key cancer mechanisms like the estrogen receptor.

I primarily work with large-scale language datasets, using methods from quantitative and computational social sciences, as well as the digital humanities. I also teach associated research methods, like statistics, data wrangling, and visualization. 

Outside my research, I am an active science communicator, primarily via two websites that I author: Effectiviology (https://effectiviology.com/), where I write about psychology and philosophy that have practical applications, and Solving Procrastination (https://solvingprocrastination.com/), where I write about what procrastination is, why we do it, and how to overcome it. 

As a Data Champion, I focus on the use of quantitative and computational methods for working with data (e.g., for data wrangling and statistical analyses). I also deal with associated topics, like maximizing the impact of research through open research and science communication. 

Karla’s PhD is about the level of energy services used in different countries with a focus on development. The research involves analysing country-level databases, performing statistical analyses and making visualisations. 

Karla holds a Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an MSc from University College London (UCL). 

Karla’s professional experiences before the PhD included working for the non-alcoholic beverage industry in Mexico in the areas of quality, environment protection and operations management.