Research Scientist, CSIRO

Three questions for Elena

What has your career looked like to date?

I completed my PhD in mathematical physics in 2016 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy for two years. I returned to Australia to embark on a career in data science. I was offered a four-month internship with Data61, CSIRO to develop my skills, and then successfully applied for my current role.

What do you do in your current position?

During my four years at Data61, I have worked on seven commercial projects and two internal projects. The commercial projects were with industry or government partners, and each project required a unique mathematical modelling approach tailored to the client’s problem and available data.

My role in these projects was to apply mathematical and statistical techniques to analyse the client’s data, using R or Python. For example, I developed models of demand so a client could more systematically determine the amount of inventory they should keep for the different products they manufacture. In another project, I developed causal models to estimate the impact of childcare attendance on children’s development.

How has your mathematics/statistics training been useful in your career?

I led a research project which uses three areas of mathematics and machine learning to model movement data. Though I was not an expert in any of these areas, my general mathematics knowledge allowed me to gain a high-level understanding of the research and ask questions to check the validity and robustness of the work being carried out.

The communication skills I developed by presenting at conferences and tutoring undergraduate mathematics are important in interacting with clients. I can explain the idea behind my analysis, what assumptions were made and the meaning of the results to non-specialist audiences.