Five minute profile: interview with Eleanor Mitchell

What’s your role at RDS and what does your typical workday involve?

I am a Senior Data Analyst in sourcing at RDS, working on delivery of the ADR Scotland (Administrative Data Research Scotland) programme. This means that I work closely with the team of Data Analysts at RDS and colleagues in ADR Scotland based at the Scottish Government, to ingest and update datasets into the ADR Scotland catalogue.

What’s your background and how does it give you additional insight to your work at RDS?

I completed my first degree in Developmental Biology in Aberdeen but quickly realised I didn't have what it takes to be a laboratory scientist, so I took a Masters and PhD in Information Science.

From there I worked in scientific software support and operational management roles in small and scaling startups, a large biopharmaceutical company, a private company limited by guarantee and finally Scottish Enterprise, an economic development agency and non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. 

When I took severance from Scottish Enterprise in 2019, I decided to go back to university and study for a Masters in Artificial Intelligence and Applications at Strathclyde, supported by a DataLab scholarship. I was lucky enough to get an industrial placement to do my dissertation, which was quite challenging during Covid lockdown, but this gave me hands on experience of working with administrative (admin) data. Once I graduated, I got a job at effini as a data specialist, then, after being made redundant from that earlier this year, I got the job at RDS.

I’ve worked on admin data as part of volunteering on the dressCode project for the Scottish Tech Army and under contract to the University of Edinburgh, so I have some experience of the challenges of trying to work out what data is available, from whom and which pieces you need to conduct your research.

I’ve experienced the challenge of waiting for data to be delivered and trying to bring data from different sources together in a useful format to explore a research question, all while your research funding is quickly running out. So I’m pleased to be part of RDS’s work to make this process simpler and quicker.

What’s a highlight and a challenge of your role?

A highlight – I like putting processes in place, problem solving and getting things done. RDS’s Data team is new(-ish) and rapidly growing, so I’m having great fun working out how things might be done best and to whom we need to talk to understand what was done before and how we can build on it.

And a challenge – Our inhouse standard programming language is R and my main experience in data programming has been in Python, so I thought that I would struggle to make the change. However, we are building an R pipeline approach which gives us the general structure for our data preparation work, and we’re applying a problem-solving approach when we hit issues.

The team at RDS are very supportive, so conferring with colleagues (and Stack Overflow!) to help with the specific R syntax means that the transition to R has not been too bad (so far). There are plenty of obstacles and problems to be solved, but it’s a satisfying process and it feels good to be learning.

What difference do you hope RDS will make? 

I couldn’t believe how long it takes currently for researchers to get access to the data they need to explore their topics of interest.

RDS is aiming to streamline services and make more current data available so that researchers can conduct relevant research. I’m hopeful that this will help improve the lives of everyone in our society, but particularly those that are the most disadvantaged.

What would be your "Mastermind" specialist subject?

I am a generalist, not a specialist! I know a lot of trivia so I’m usually quite useful in pub quizzes, but I would be useless at Mastermind. 

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? 

I went on a training course when I was stepping into a new role which required presenting to an audience. I used to really dread this and would often just read out what was on the slides.

They told me that you really need to connect what you are trying to get across to something that you feel passionate about. In that way, you tell an engaging story to which people will listen. I don’t always give myself enough time to prepare and follow that advice, but when I do I think that it’s definitely improved my presentation style and prevented the audience from falling asleep!