The era of big data is coming: Scientists need to step out of their comfort zone

As every area of research becomes data-intensive, emphasis is shifting from data generation to data analysis, bringing new challenges to researchers, says Réka Nagy.

On my first day as a new PhD student, freshly awarded molecular genetics degree in hand, I was sat down at a laptop with an unfamiliar operating system and was encouraged to explore some data using arr. What sounded like pirate speak turned out to be R, a statistical programming language. Yep – for my PhD I swapped pipettes for programming, dilutions for data and spectrophotometers for statistics. Others experienced the opposite, entering the world of biology from a computer science background.

Réka Nagy

Réka Nagy

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#scidata16: Publishing Better Science through Better Data: Writing competition

This competition provides the chance to attend the Publishing Better Science through Better Data October 2016 event, work with a Nature editor and have your writing published here on Naturejobs.

After a very successful event last year, we are again looking for five budding science writers to help with news coverage of this year’s Publishing Better Science through Better Data event.

 

scidataWellcomeSDATA2

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