Description
Associate Professor at Roskilde University Pia Nyeng is a developmental biologists, specialized in how the inner organs are formed during embryotic development. “I look at the spatial and temporal organization of different cell types, and how they come together and form a functioning organ. So, I do a lot of 3D and 4D imaging,” she adds. To analyze her data, she combines different freeware and commercial software for 3D data and 2D data and collaborates with data scientists for the more challenging data. “I program a bit myself, and I employ students who program. Often, a data scientist will be the computational supervisor.”Future biologists are now learning to code
This year, first-semester biology students at Roskilde University are introduced to Python, Pia Nyeng explains. “But very few of my graduate students use Python or R, so when they do image analysis, I get them started with free software that allows them to make small macros on their own.”
In her experience, this is a soft introduction to programming and the benefit is immediate and tangible for the students. “They make the task a lot easier for themselves by writing and running small macros, so they don't have to push the same buttons again and again.”
Bridging the gap between life science and data science
Pia Nyeng believes future generations of biologists will be able to do simple programming, yet more complex disciplines like deep learning will still only be accessible through collaborations. “I’ve asked data science PhD students whether they think any data scientists would want to learn biology and bridge the gap from the other side, but the answer was negative,” she tells us. Therefore, she thinks biologists need to learn more about data science. “At least I have learned enough to be able to communicate with data scientists. Some terms in biology mean something completely different than the same terms mean in data science, so it requires us to learn a bit on both sides,” she concludes.
| Period | 12 May 2023 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Alexandra Instituttet A/S, Denmark |
| Degree of Recognition | National |