Data Champions Search

Haifeng Niu is a research associate in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in Land Economy from the Lab of Interdisciplinary Spatial Analysis (LISA). His research interests include urban big data mining, spatial data science, geographic information visualization, and dynamic simulation.

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. 

I’ve been working in the Department of Psychiatry for almost a decade now. I specialise in improving process and workflow and in research data management. I also work in branding, digital recruitment, website design and administration, social media management, and data architecture. I am particularly good at thinking of new and creative solutions to emerging problems. I am currently working on ways to govern and organise the many research projects within my department and in the School of Clinical Medicine, and on creating ways to share research and imaging data (MRI, PET etc) openly.  

As the Research Support Librarian at the Department of Engineering I am part of the Technology Libraries team providing library services for the Departments of Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and Computer Science and Technology. My role includes providing training and advice on research data management and open data. I became a Data Champion in my previous role as the Library Manager at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, supporting nature conservation researchers from the university and NGOs. I have previous experience, from research during masters degrees, working with ethnographic data in libraries and statistical analysis of palaeobiology data using R.