In this current role at CLOSER, I am the product owner for CLOSER Discovery (https://discovery.closer.ac.uk/), which includes the curation pipeline and management of the metadata team. I am jointly responsible for the development of the long term strategic objectives for CLOSER Discovery. I liaise with colleagues from multiple institutions, maintaining standards and providing guidance to current and potential CLOSER Discovery studies. I also advocate for metadata standards in longitudinal population studies through the development of training and involvement in international networks including the Data Documentation Initiative Alliance.

My role as Metadata Manager involved maintaining and co-ordinating the content of CLOSER’s metadata to be added to the CLOSER Discovery search engine. This involved implementing the minimum metadata specification set out by CLOSER and DDI-Lifecycle. I was also responsible for CLOSER’s metadata and data enhancement documentation, both for internal use and use by international audiences. I provided advice, guidance and training of metadata enhancement and specialist software for all studies within CLOSER Discovery, ensuring data quality and consistency is maintained. Furthermore I created evaluation reports which include viability and resource cost estimates for candidate longitudinal studies wishing to join CLOSER Discovery. In addition, I task manage external colleagues’ work related to documenting metadata using in-house software. Lastly, I continually worked to improve the efficiency and quality of the CLOSER metadata repository in liaison with users and partners.

My position at the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) involved the management of data within several different international and national scientific research projects. My responsibilities included liaising with scientists and technicians in order to track and acquire the data and metadata. Once the data are acquired I reformatted and standardised the data as well as carrying out quality control measures before the data were archived into the oracle database. I managed and processed many data types including biological, chemical, physical and geophysical, from a variety of instrumentation, received in a number of formats including; Mstar, Matlab, ASCII, NetCDF, and Excel, therefore being able to learn and adapt to new data was essential. I would also compiled all available information, synthesising this into more concise and useable documents which were provided to the end user. My project management responsibility included allocating work to several colleagues, planning the workload for each quarter, ensuring that the project completed within the time and resource constraints and communication with external stakeholders. In addition to my daily responsibilities I also audited colleagues’ work to ensure data and metadata accuracy. I was part of a team responsible for the controlled vocabularies used within BODC and internationally. I also formed part of a team responsible for training new starters which included writing resources, delivering these and mentoring. In addition, I was part of sub team which was responsible for developing Matlab functions to convert data into BODC’s standardised format. My role involved using initiative, being systematic as well as having a disciplined approach to assuring accuracy. Although my background was not in oceanography I was able to quickly adapt to this new subject and gained the necessary skills both scientific and IT related to achieve a high standard of work.

I achieved a PhD at the University of Liverpool entitled “Assessing the viability of using foraminifera from Mersey Estuary saltmarsh sediments to reconstruct former sea Level”. My research involved collecting saltmarsh sediments and using the microfossils within them as a proxy for sea-level. In brief, my work entailed collecting samples in the field, laboratory and microscope analysis, data handling, statistical analysis and critical evaluation. One key component of my research involved the geochemical analysis of sediments and establishing the contamination level for chronology and safety. During my PhD I handled a complex dataset of environmental and species data from saltmarshes. The dataset was complex due to the number and variety of intercorrelating variables. To test the relationship between species and variables I used the specialist ecological packages in R. Initial screening was carried out to ensure the data would give statically significant results. I used many statistical analysis techniques depending on whether the data were unimodal or linear in order to determine whether the variables have an effect on the species distribution and if so which variables were most influential, when removing the effects of the other variables. During the data analysis I learnt the importance of ensuring validity which can be achieved by carrying out several different analyses to objectively evaluate the result. Lastly, I learnt to objectively evaluate the results and consider the flaws in the analysis, as results can often be subject to interpretation which can introduce a subjective bias.Funded by the department of Geography UOL, and National Oceanography Centre. Additional funding awarded by Quaternary Research Association (£250) and Natural Environment Research Council (£3000).

During my undergraduate and post-graduate studies I worked as a part time cashier. My main duties included taking, capturing, and paying out bets, maintaining the shop displays and handling large amounts of money. I gained important communication skills during this role including how tobuild relationships with clients and identify and manage those who were vulnerable and sometimes disruptive. Working with customers would also entail simultaneous and accurate processing of the bets on the internal computer software system. Good team work would be essential on the busiest working days to ensure that the high level of customers and bets were processed on time in an efficient and accurate way.