As a curious data scientist and someone who believes that effectively disseminating research is as important as the research itself, I think I would be a great candidate to join your team. 

For nearly the past four years I have been working as a Data Scientist at SomaLogic where I collaborated with cross-functional teams including Clinical, Marketing, Commercial, Regulatory, Medical Affairs, and external research teams to develop and validate diagnostic tests using regression and ML algorithms and proteomics data and conducted clinical research analyses to understand how our tests performed in different subpopulations, which led to multiple publications and patent filings. I went from being a novice R user to contributing to our internal code base by writing and updating functions with unit tests, creating semi-automated tools for analysis using R Markdown, managing packages in R, conducting code reviews and pull requests, and maintaining documentation. I initiated a project that led to the documentation of our team’s processes and best practices and a semi-automated tool that reduced processing time by 95%. I also managed project timelines and deliverables for my direct reports, onboarded new team members, and oversaw internship projects. As the team scrum master, I led weekly sprint planning meetings, kept the team on track with JIRA boards and confluence pages, and coordinated weekly Bioinformatics department meetings including scheduling guest speakers from across the organization. 

During my thesis research, I conducted extensive background research and became an expert in Type I Diabetes and infant diets, taught myself new statistical analysis methods, cleaned survey data, and interpreted novel metabolomics results. This independent research taught me how to be resourceful, work with many collaborators across the study, and summarize results from complex data. 

Since 2019, I have attended the R::Studio Conference where I have taken the Machine Learning with tidymodels and Causal Inference workshops, as well as Coursera courses in Data Science, Machine Learning, Regression, and Survival Models to learn more about different regression and machine learning methods. After being laid off at SomaLogic at the end of 2022, I have started taking classes to learn Python and refresh my SQL skills. I have also setup a GitHub account to host some examples of my work. 

I have worked in diverse work environments ranging from startups to governments to hospitals and I would like to work in a position where I can continue to collaborate across teams, mentor team members, broaden my statistical analysis skills, gain knowledge with different “omics” data and new technologies, and learn more software languages and tools. I believe my diverse background coupled with my desire to continue learning and outgoing energy would make me a great addition to the team. I look forward to discussing my candidacy with you further.   

Best, 

      Natasha Kureshi