This month, the Bay Area Open Science Group features Dr. Abel Torres Espin. Abel Torres Espin is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. He is also appointed as Adjunct Faculty at the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Alberta and as an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Abel is part of the data team for several multi-center big data observational studies aimed at capturing and analyzing as much data as possible from different populations. Additionally, Abel is an advocate for open science, data sharing, and reproducibility. He serves as the lead data scientist for health data-sharing initiatives like the Open Data Commons for Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury. Abel also participates in initiatives on data-sharing standards. 

Through a few endeavors in open science and data sharing, we have learned that one of the major barriers for adopting data-sharing by the laboratory researchers is the low-level of data and data management literacy due to lack of training. Data sharing initiatives have a chance for bigger impact by educating those generating data about the data life cycle and good practices. In this session, Abel will discuss our lessons learned to lower the barrier to good data practices, perhaps at the expense of best practices.

The Bay Area Open Science Group is intended to bring together students, faculty, and staff from the Stanford, UCSF, and Berkeley community to learn about open science, discuss the application of open science practices in a research context, and meet other members of the community who are interested in (or already are) incorporating open science practices into their work. Learn more about the group and connect with us on our website.