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Data is Rarely Unbiased– Paul Agapow (AstraZeneca)
On this episode of Would You Data Scientist, Wendy is joined by guest Paul Agapow, Biomedical and Epi-informatic Data Science Leader focusing on solving complex cross-disciplinary problems at AstraZeneca. Find out Paul's tips on getting into data science and his brilliant explanation on how pharmacy drugs get to the market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
-If you've done a masters in anything even remotely related to data science, then you can make a go of it. But keep in mind, regardless of your qualifications you should tell employers what you did and what problems you solved, rather than the tools you know how to use. The main value of a master's degree is just showing a minimal low bar on your skills to employers.
-Companies know they need data science but they don't necessarily know why they need it or how it should be used. If you can show an employer that you know the questions they need answered through data science, they will they will want to bring you into the team.
-Data is rarely unbiased. While doing data studies on patients, Paul comes across a certain type of person most often. WEIRD, or white, educated, from industrialised nations, rich, and democratic. The other way to look at it is that there is a large amount of this type of person who are likely to show up to early drug trials.
-90% of genomic data is from the US or Europe. And breaking it down further, 86% is from the US, UK, and Iceland. This is a very narrow data set and for better results the sample size should be larger and more diverse.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It takes $2 Billion and 10 years to go from a drug candidate to a drug on the market'
‘Some of the projects data scientists do are so off the wall!'
‘If you think you've even got a 10% chance of getting in then apply for the job'
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-agapow/
https://www.astrazeneca.com/
https://www.meetup.com/Bioinformatics-London/
ABOUT THE GUEST
“Originally a biochemist and immunologist, I was fortunate enough to stumble into computer science and informatics, realizing how powerful and vital they would become in biological research. Following many years working on computational biology in the context of infectious disease and epidemiology, in academia, government and industry, I'm now a Health Informatics Director at AstraZeneca, based in tropical Cambridge UK. There I work on a wide range of innovative projects, exploring the possibilities of biomedical Big Data and its application to personalized medicine and therapies, in particular the use of novel algorithms and machine learning in discovering patient subtypes and predicting outcomes.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES
linkedin.com/in/ethicalrecruiter
qwerkrecruitment.com
@qwerkrec on socials
ABOUT THE HOST
Wendy Gannon started Qwerk Recruitment in the middle of the Covid Pandemic to disrupt the recruitment sector with ETHICAL data recruitment and treat everyone with love, dignity and respect. Avid Music photographer of 15 years.
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
View all episodes
By Wendy Gannon
5
22 ratings
On this episode of Would You Data Scientist, Wendy is joined by guest Paul Agapow, Biomedical and Epi-informatic Data Science Leader focusing on solving complex cross-disciplinary problems at AstraZeneca. Find out Paul's tips on getting into data science and his brilliant explanation on how pharmacy drugs get to the market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
-If you've done a masters in anything even remotely related to data science, then you can make a go of it. But keep in mind, regardless of your qualifications you should tell employers what you did and what problems you solved, rather than the tools you know how to use. The main value of a master's degree is just showing a minimal low bar on your skills to employers.
-Companies know they need data science but they don't necessarily know why they need it or how it should be used. If you can show an employer that you know the questions they need answered through data science, they will they will want to bring you into the team.
-Data is rarely unbiased. While doing data studies on patients, Paul comes across a certain type of person most often. WEIRD, or white, educated, from industrialised nations, rich, and democratic. The other way to look at it is that there is a large amount of this type of person who are likely to show up to early drug trials.
-90% of genomic data is from the US or Europe. And breaking it down further, 86% is from the US, UK, and Iceland. This is a very narrow data set and for better results the sample size should be larger and more diverse.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It takes $2 Billion and 10 years to go from a drug candidate to a drug on the market'
‘Some of the projects data scientists do are so off the wall!'
‘If you think you've even got a 10% chance of getting in then apply for the job'
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-agapow/
https://www.astrazeneca.com/
https://www.meetup.com/Bioinformatics-London/
ABOUT THE GUEST
“Originally a biochemist and immunologist, I was fortunate enough to stumble into computer science and informatics, realizing how powerful and vital they would become in biological research. Following many years working on computational biology in the context of infectious disease and epidemiology, in academia, government and industry, I'm now a Health Informatics Director at AstraZeneca, based in tropical Cambridge UK. There I work on a wide range of innovative projects, exploring the possibilities of biomedical Big Data and its application to personalized medicine and therapies, in particular the use of novel algorithms and machine learning in discovering patient subtypes and predicting outcomes.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES
linkedin.com/in/ethicalrecruiter
qwerkrecruitment.com
@qwerkrec on socials
ABOUT THE HOST
Wendy Gannon started Qwerk Recruitment in the middle of the Covid Pandemic to disrupt the recruitment sector with ETHICAL data recruitment and treat everyone with love, dignity and respect. Avid Music photographer of 15 years.
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.