Community Spotlight #6: Andrew Hooyman
January 25th, 2024
Andrew is currently a post-doc at Arizona State University in the School of Engineering where he is near completing his training as part of an NIH F32 grant. His research focus is in creating digital health technology that can aid in the early detection of neurodegenerative disease.
Tell us about your background.
My early academic career focused on human movement and the theoretical and applied aspects of human motor skill learning. During my PhD, I continued this theme with special emphasis investigating why a significant number of individuals demonstrated a type of practice intolerance (i.e. non-learning) even after repeated practice. When I then transitioned into my post-doc, I transitioned my in-lab research into an online digital platform where the investigation of this interesting behavioral phenotype could be more broadly investigated among a large, diverse cohort.
What sparked your interest in learning data science?
In my view, data science and statistics allow us to generate the best inferences given the data available. During my master's thesis, I had zero skill in programming and relied heavily on Excel to merge, clean, and process my data. It took forever. Then, I analyzed my data using SPSS, which was only available within my school's library. What would probably take me a couple of weeks today took me months then. Thankfully, as I progressed through my studies, I was fortunate to have mentors and resources made available to me to learn.
What are you most excited about ReproRehab?
I am most excited about seeing others who participate in ReproRehab, either as TAs or Learners, grow their skills in becoming more reproducibility conscious scientists. Opportunities to develop skills like the one's taught at ReproRehab can be hard to find dedicated time and community to develop around. It has been awesome to see the many directions and applications people have been running with as part of this program.
What advice would you give to those who wish to follow a similar path?
Don't let coding intimidate you. Is it tough? Yes, at first. It's like learning a second language, but it only takes a little experience to really get hooked. If I can learn to do it, anyone can. Dive in, have fun, and don't hesitate to ask others for help.
Anything you are passionate about outside of ReproRehab?
I am a relatively new dad, and as my daughter has gotten older we enjoy going to our local comic book store and finding the next month's issue. I highly recommend the series 'Paper Girls' which is about a group of young women who work a paper route in the 1980's but get caught up in a battle between different groups of time travelers.
Anything else you would like to share? (website/github/podcast)
Concurrent with my role as a postdoc, I also work as an instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Several weeks before I wrote this piece there was a mass shooting on the campus of UNLV. This deeply impacted all members of the university community, the effects of which will be felt for awhile. Only recently has there been increased federal funding for NIH sponsored research in gun violence, so there is still much to learn and do. Therefore, I'd like to take the opportunity to raise awareness about an organization called everytown.org, which is a non-profit that uses data science to help educate on the current state of gun violence in the U.S.
