about

~ a bit more about me both inside and outside of my job ~

the profession

I’m the Data Training Coordinator at the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS) located at UC Santa Barbara, where I’m working to develop and teach data science training curricula for the Master of Environmental Data Science (MEDS) program and other data science initiatives across NCEAS and UCSB. I am also a co-organizer of R-Ladies Santa Barbara, a local data science group which works to promote gender diversity in the R community.

My background is in marine ecology / ecophysiology – I was afforded opportunities to study coral disease in Panama and the Florida Keys as an undergrad, then temperature effects on spiny lobster metabolism and foraging behavior in Santa Barbara for my Masters degree. Since the beginning of my time in STEM, I was totally terrified of all things data/coding/data science, but thanks to a super supportive community and some really rad colleagues/instructors, I found my new path in data science education and I absolutely love it.

A classroom full of students face forward towards the instructor, who stands at a podium at the front of the room. Students have their laptops open on their desks. Three large TV screens are illuminated at the front of the classroom, displaying workshop materials.

Teaching MEDS students how to build their own personal websites using Quarto! This was especially fun for me, since Quarto was still such a new tool when I first gave this workshop – it meant a lot of discovery and learning on-the-fly alongside our students.

I’m afforded a lot of flexibility in how I teach and what I teach. Primarily, I focus on developing and delivering workshop-style classes that supplement the MEDS core curriculum. I teach primarily via live-coding (where my computer is hooked up to a screen for workshop participants to see and hear me talk through code in real time as they follow along on their own computers) – this teaching style was invaluable in my own development as a data scientist, and I really believe that, when done well, live-coding can be a game-changing experience for early-career coders and data scientists. I am always looking for new ways to make my teaching style and materials more approachable and inclusive for all learners – I try to build my materials to be stand-alone resources both for participants to refer back to and also for those learning on their own time.

the hobby

I feel very fortunate to be doing so many of things that I love a lot right now. That includes my job, but also spending lots of time outdoors. Living in Santa Barbara is a massive privilege and being here means that we have access to both the mountains and the sea, each a few minutes in either direction. It was the ocean that brought me here originally, but most of my free time is now spent on the trails.

A smiling woman with braiding pigtails, a blue bandana tied around her neck, and a blue hiking backback takes a selfie with a brown dog. The dog is looking towards the camera with it's tongue out. There are mountains in the background.

My right-hand hiking gal, Tallie (aka Bean aka TunaB aka SweetCheeks).

I started recording my hikes (and eventually some other activities) on Strava in late 2020 and finally got around to retrieving my activity data using the {rStrava} package. Below is a heatmap of all my recorded activities made using leaflet. It’s challenging to see individual markers at my most frequented trail heads/starting points, so I’ve recently began building out my own Strava Dashboard (using {shinydashboard}) to make it a bit more interactive and filterable – it’s a work in progress, but a fun side project that I’m excited to continue iterating upon. Huge shout out to Daniel Cullen (who also happens to be a Santa Barbara resident!) for his awesome blogpost that got me started with my own map.

Feel free to check out my Strava dashboard, Sam’s Strava Stats (still working on a better name…)! Source code available on GitHub GitHub.

Map last updated: May 1, 2023