written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-29 | tags: reflections science one academia
Some reflections on my journey since finishing the Science One first-year program at UBC. It's been a winding journey to where I am now.
Read on... (1010 words, approximately 6 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-22
Today, I gave a webinar to the IRD and ViPR technical and advisory board meeting. There were a number of challenges to giving a webinar that I want to reflect on here, as a note to my future self and others who may read this entry. In contrast to... (read more)
(538 words, approximately 3 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-21
We've submitted back our reassortment paper post-review. I've refrained from writing about this for about a week, mainly so that I can give myself... (read more)
(391 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-18
I recently built a front-end GUI for one of my projects, which is a primer calculator for doing Gibson assembly with influenza... (read more)
(398 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-17 | tags: philosophy science
Random thought came to my mind today.
The process of science is the careful observation, measurement, and falsification of hypotheses of the world. It is immensely useful. IMO, a worldview that gives rise to genuine curiosity,... (read more)
(208 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-15
In the software development world, I learned about the importance of writing tests for one’s software. Since then, I have incorporated this habit in my own work, where as part of my more recent work, I write tests for the software I write to... (read more)
(378 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-03-13 | tags: python data science statistics R
I’ve heard this refrain many times. However, the distinction never really made sense to me.
R and Python are merely programming languages. You don’t have to do stats in R and data processing in Python. You can do data processing in R, and... (read more)
(552 words, approximately 3 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-02-13 | tags: chalk talk public speaking research presentation influenza research broad institute seminar series audience interaction talk preparation slide decks whiteboard talk presentation skills feedback science communication infectious disease evolution
Yesterday, I shook things up at the Broad Institute's Infectious Disease Program seminar series by doing a chalk talk instead of a slide deck presentation. It was less stressful to prepare for, the audience was engaged, and I got some valuable feedback. 🎤🔬👥
I've learned a lot from this experience and I think chalk talks should become the norm again for research presentations. 📝💡
Read on... (424 words, approximately 3 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-02-09 | tags: data science software carpentry data carpentry
This past Monday, I led a hands-on session at the Broad Institute, showing how to use the scikit-learn API, as well as common coding patterns for running machine... (read more)
(489 words, approximately 3 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2015-12-03 | tags: influenza graduate school peer review thesis data science
I am happy to announce that, with my advisor's (Jon Runstadler, MIT) approval, I've uploaded my first 1st-author paper to BioRXiv. This may sound surprising, to document and write... (read more)
(1491 words, approximately 8 minutes reading time)