Data Champions Search

Ali is Senior Data Scientist and public-health/transport modeller in the Public Health Modelling (PHM) group at the MRC-Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge. He is interested in active travel, specifically cycling research. 

Coming from a Computer Science background, with a focus on modelling in his PhD, for over a decade, he has been doing data-driven research and development. This includes Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), Statistical Modelling (or Machine Learning), Interactive Visualization, all with a focus on collaborative, transparent and reproducible research. In addition, he leads in project management and managing, training, guiding, and teaching of junior staff in his Unit. His work can be seen on GitHub at https://github.com/usr110.

A native of Messina in Italy, Concetta completed her BA in Conservation of Cultural Heritage in 2007 at the University of Messina. During her university years she worked in various libraries and cultural institutions in Italy. She completed her MA in Archival and Library Science at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ in 2009. In 2011 she moved to the UK where she worked as a Cataloguer for Blackwell, Baker & Taylor and YBP/EBSCO, acquiring great experience in cataloguing books and ebooks. In September 2015 she moved to Cambridge University Press where, as Senior Library Data Analyst, she uses her knowledge of cataloguing and metadata to improve the quality of the metadata supplied to customers and third parties. From 2017 she is the Cambridge University Press representative on the Metadata2020 project and from 2019 Social Media Manager for the CILIP – CIG Cataloguing and Indexing Group. 

Additional areas of expertise:

Bibliographic databases, catalogues and repositories. 

Creation and manipulation of metadata using tools like MarcEdit, Bibliofile, Classificationweb, WebDewey. 

Library platforms such as WorldCat, Alma, Primo.

In my role as Academic Services Librarian, I manage services delivered in the Haddon Library with a specific focus on supporting teaching and research for the Departments of Archaeology and Social Anthropology. I am also the Research Support Lead for the Humanities and Social Sciences Libraries Team, working across the School of HSS to support research excellence and training as well as assisting in exercises such as the REF.

Additional areas of expertise: Information literacy, Research communication, Public engagement, Creative Commons, Open sharing.

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.