Kathy Ayers

Born in Wales, raised in the US, resident of Northern Ireland for the past 20 years. I first learned to programme working as an intern for NASA (FORTRAN!). I enjoyed the experience so much, I promptly went to university and studied political science. I’ve worked as a public policy lecturer, bookstore clerk, accounting assistant at a major film studio, policy officer for a political party and gave out lottery grants for almost 15 years. Then I ran away and joined the circus or rather, did a conversion course at QUB in software development and got hired as an analytics engineer in the data science division of a really big US insurance company. I really do love data, want to mathematically model human behavior, and just wish I was better at everything except maybe making cocktails. I am content with my margaritas. And the things I do with vodka, a martini glass, and my cocktail shaker.

Collaboration in Practice: How an open source ethos delivers data science