I recently accepted a new data scientist position at the Navy. I will be working at the Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC), specifically within Operations (N3). In this blog post, I will talk about my primary motivations for joining and the projects I am looking forward to.

Motivation

I was motivated to join CNIC to grow my career and to have the opportunity to work in a different field. Throughout my academic and professional career, I have worked within the sphere of public health. I pursued medical entomology for graduate school, became a vector-borne disease epidemiologist, and then a data scientist working in polio surveillance. Each of these experiences have taught me to become a better data scientist, project manager, and collaborator. In the same way, I hope that this new opportunity will get me closer to my goal of leading my own data science team in the future.

In addition, being able to work at a Navy Echelon II command is an opportunity for me to work at a higher-level strategic and operational environment. I will be working closely with program directors and am looking forward in assisting them in data-related projects.

Finally, being close to my family. As someone who’s pretty family-oriented, I am happy that I get to see them more often!

Projects I’m Looking Forward To

I am interested in applying my data science skills to help make sense of the large amount of data involved within Navy operations and to lead data modernization efforts. Given the scale of the Navy enterprise, I hope that I can at least make some parts of operations management easier for the program directors. I’m still unsure what data I’ll be working on, but I think it’ll be clearer once I’m onboarded and get a chance to work with the data directly.

What I’ll Miss from CDC

My team. The collaborations with country health ministries and partners within the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). The work towards global polio eradication. The Roybal campus. General Muir’s rueben sandwich.

I am thankful for the opportunity to spend the last few years working with such a great team. The projects I got to work on definitely pushed me to level up my data science skills. Near the end, I was able to successfully develop and manage multiple software packages used throughout the GPEI partnership, as well as lead efforts toward making our products robust and well-documented. In addition, I was able to establish collaborative partnerships within the Polio Information System (POLIS) team, improving the POLIS API and surveillance data quality.

I don’t think I’ll ever be fully out of the realm of public health. Just like entomology will never leave my LinkedIn feed, nor updates from my other public health colleagues doing great work, I will be keeping a pulse on the state of public health.