written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-05-11
Finally, after ~2 years of learning, working, collaborating and writing, there's been a slew of papers from our research lab going out. Really happy to have finally contributed to our collective scientific knowledge, both through my own efforts and... (read more)
(354 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-05-11 | tags: scipy conferences python
This year, I had the privilege of serving on the SciPy (Scientific Python Conference) 2016 financial aid committee, and I will be headed to Austin, TX to present a tutorial on on fundamental and statistical network analysis.
In some ways,... (read more)
(161 words, approximately 1 minute reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-04-07
The paper can be found here (preprint, freely available; accepted at PNAS and in press).
In no order of importance, here are the things I would tell myself to do from the... (read more)
(799 words, approximately 4 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2016-04-07 | tags: science graduate school influenza peer review
For the reader of a newly-published article, all that we see is precisely that - the article itself. We rarely get to hear about the back-story of that paper, or the choices that were made, the struggles involved, and the emotional ride taken. I... (read more)
(2803 words, approximately 15 minutes reading time)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... (1093 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)
(552 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)
(406 words, approximately 3 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)
(420 words, approximately 3 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)
(390 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)