A Clarion, PA native who now works through Insignia Federal Group as a contractor for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) tasks.
Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology
My typical day involves a morning of reviewing data documentation to conceptualize a program for a client project followed by a kick off meeting to discuss data issues and address any questions I may have. In the afternoon I begin working on writing the code for the project and as the day ends I review programs creating files for approved researcher projects to make sure they are correct and only contain approved content before the files are delivered
I took one Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) programming class in grad school and then continued to teach my self additional statistical programming skills and learned additional software skills throughout my career.
Slowly more and more companies and people are switching the primary programming software they use to more open source forms like R and Python. Even in the academic and government space. Also the integration of AI is being brought up more and how to best utilize it.
We use AI to aid in writing quick data queries and assisting with questions.
Problem solving
Attention to detail
Communication.
The biggest surprise and also joy in my career has been the continuous learning. I always expected the more senior roles to already have all the knowledge and answers to the questions I brought them, but, in reality everyone is learning and figuring out how to understand concepts and solve problems together.