Testimonials

The programme is really structured in a way that we are set up to succeed. We are provided at an early-stage; technical training, “alpha skills” (soft skills) training and presentation skills.

There is an excellent community atmosphere in LIDA and even in the programme itself. The culture in the project itself, made me greatly admire LIDA because of this atmosphere of growth and having expertise and infrastructure, so it’s been great for my development. Being at the early stage of my data science journey at that time, it opened the doors for limitless possibilities for me.

LIDA is just such an amazing place to work and to be a part of and to contribute to, while still growing to the place I want to be.

The first two weeks of the programme were almost purely designated for training. Which was training in multiple programming languages, spatial analysis and data analysis which helped me to get a kickstart on the project and understand the job from the start. Another great development was attending conferences, I presented my work in front of fellow academics and got invaluable feedback and networking which I’m sure will help me in the future.

Throughout the programme I received a lot of support from the programme manager, supervisors and my fellow data scientists. My supervisors went above and beyond by asking me about my next steps since the programme is fixed term. They were very keen to help me with references and prepare me for interviews in whatever area I wish to pursue after the programme.

My learning curve over the last 11 months has just been really, really high in terms of all the coding I’ve done and all the data science methods which I’ve learnt to use. We had a training budget which we could use and could direct where we spent that ourselves to help with the project or I used some of mine to go to a conference. Being able to explore different ideas has been really useful and the supervisors there to guide you but allow you to use your own ideas and problem solving.

Generally everyone’s been really supportive and really helpful throughout my time here. Especially relatively early on in my time here, I learnt that I might have ADHD. From all my supervisors, as well as the rest of the staff at LIDA, it as not just supportive in terms of moral support, but also practical support in terms of finding resources for me, speaking to people they knew who had similar experiences and finding all these things that could help me and that was absolutely fantastic and really really appreciated.

An important moment for me was when my supervisors of the first project encouraged me to write an extended abstract for a conference. I think it really boosted my confidence and it also helped me realise the importance and relevance of a project and it just made me want to work even more on it.

I improved my communications skills and I learned to communicate about the impact of my research and why its relevant.

I’ve really enjoyed the pastoral support of the programme, where they send you a dedicated buddy who is really invested in you. They give that emotional support outside of the much needed technical support of the programme.

Firstly, the ability to work in a team, secondly the ability to ramp up skills in different domains and thirdly the resiliency to conduct research in producing tangible outputs.