Kristin Selker

What are the education or qualification requirements for this career? 

Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology 

Describe your typical day.

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

What types of coursework or concepts did you study to prepare for this career? 

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.

How are you seeing your career changing? 

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. 

How are you using artificial intelligence?

We use AI to aid in writing quick data queries and assisting with questions.

What are the three most important skills for your career? 

1. Problem solving

2. Attention to detail

3. Communication.

What is one of the biggest surprises about your career? 

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.