Batool Almarzouq

I am proud to be a core member of the Turing Way, an open-source, community-driven guide to reproducible, ethical, inclusive and collaborative data science developed by the Alan Turing Institute. In February 2020, the Turing Way expanded to a series of books covering reproducible research, project design, communication, collaboration, and ethical research. I am leading the localization and translation team, working to make the guide available in multiple languages using Crowdin and GitHub. I am excited to be a part of this initiative and contribute to the advancement of responsible and inclusive data science practices.

I am honored to be a mentor and co-facilitator in the Open Life Science (OLS) program, which is based on the Mozilla Open Leader Program and aims to help individuals and stakeholders become Open Science ambassadors. I have been a mentor for both OLS5 and OLS6, and one of the projects I mentored was led by Biandri Joubert, which aimed to create an open educational resource that demonstrates the "why" for people from legal backgrounds who might want to learn R. The project is partly a case for open and reproducible research in a field that does not typically use R and quantitative methods. The project also involves creating different data sets derived from commonly used legal sources that law students or graduates would be familiar with and incorporating them into a single platform with a few examples of practical use and application, as well as code. I am excited to be a part of this initiative and contribute to the advancement of open and reproducible research in legal field.

I am proud to have founded the Open Science Community Saudi Arabia (OSCSA), with the mission to build capacity and promote open science and open innovation in Arabic speaking countries. The community aims to provide a platform for researchers, practitioners, and educators to share knowledge, collaborate, and support each other in the adoption of open science principles and practices. The OSCSA community offers a variety of activities, such as workshops, training, meetups, and online discussions to introduce and contextualize open science practices in Arabic-speaking countries. The community also provides resources, such as guides, templates, and online tools to help researchers in these countries to implement open science practices. As the founder of OSCSA, I have been actively involved in building the community from the ground up, by recruiting members, organizing events, and creating resources to support open science in the region. My goal is to make open science more accessible and inclusive for researchers in Arabic-speaking countries, and to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers in the region

I am honored to be a Content Subject Matter Expert (SME) in NASA’s TOPS (Transform to Open Science) initiative, which is designed to promote scientific innovation, transparency, and reproducibility. As part of my role, I have been actively involved in designing the Open Tools module, which is a component of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on open science. The MOOC will be hosted on the openEDx platform, making it accessible to a wide audience. I am excited to be a part of this initiative and to contribute to the development of educational resources that will help researchers to adopt open science practices in their work.

I am proud to be working with the Education committee in the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) to co-organise hands-on tutorials as part of the ISCB Academy. Our goal is to provide researchers and students with the knowledge and skills they need to perform cutting-edge computational biology research. The tutorials are designed to be interactive and engaging, with a focus on practical applications of computational biology methods. One of the key goals of this project is to implement FAIR principles in the design of the tutorials. By implementing FAIR principles in the tutorials, we aim to promote transparency and reproducibility in computational biology research.

I had the opportunity to spend a month in two cities in Uganda, Hoima and Kampala, as part of the Liverpool-Mulago Partnership. The partnership is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda that aims to improve maternal and child health outcomes in Uganda. During my time there, I had the opportunity to assist in the hospital and provide support to the medical staff. In addition, I was involved in collecting and analyzing data regarding infant mortality in the region. The data collected will be used to identify the main causes of infant mortality and to develop strategies to reduce the rate of infant mortality in Uganda. This experience was extremely valuable to me as it gave me the opportunity to learn about the challenges that people in the region face and the impact of poor maternal and child health on their lives.

I am proud to be a certified instructor for The Carpentries, a global non-profit organization that teaches computer programming and data science skills to researchers through instructional workshops. The Carpentries is made up of three program areas: Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry. As a certified instructor, I have been involved in teaching workshops to researchers, providing them with the skills they need to analyze and manage data effectively. In addition to teaching workshops, I am also working with the lesson development team to develop a new lesson about single-cell RNA-seq in the Carpentries-incubator. Single-cell RNA-seq is a cutting-edge technology that allows researchers to study gene expression at the level of individual cells. The new lesson will provide researchers with the knowledge and skills they need to analyze single-cell RNA-seq data and gain insights into the biology of individual cells. I am excited to be a part of this initiative and to contribute to the development of educational resources that will help researchers to advance the field of single-cell RNA-seq research

I recently had the opportunity to co-organize the Global useR Conference 2021, a non-profit conference organized by community volunteers for the R community. The conference brought together around 2000 attendees from academia and industry, including R developers, data scientists, business intelligence specialists, analysts, statisticians and students. As a member of the organizing committee, I played an active role in the planning and execution of the conference. I was in charge of the newbie's event, which was designed to provide a supportive environment for individuals who are new or never contributed to the R community. The event helped to introduce new members to the R community and provided them with the resources and support they need to become active contributors. I was also part of the Code of Conduct response team, which is responsible for ensuring that the conference is a safe and inclusive space for all attendees. I am proud to have been a part of this initiative and to have contributed to the success of the Global useR Conference 2021. It was an incredible opportunity to connect with the R community and to learn from experts in the field.

I am the founder and organizer of the first local chapter of R-Ladies in the Arab states of the Arabian Gulf. R-Ladies is an organization that promotes gender diversity in the R community worldwide. As the founder and organizer of the local chapter, I am dedicated to creating a welcoming and inclusive space for individuals of all genders to learn about the R programming language, algorithms, and advanced tools. I also collaborate with other R-Ladies chapters in North Africa to promote reproducibility with R to scientists in the Arab nations. Through our meetings, whether in person or virtually, members have the opportunity to learn from experienced R users, network with peers, and become part of a supportive and encouraging community. I am passionate about fostering diversity and inclusivity in the field of data science and technology, and I am proud to have created a local chapter of R-Ladies that reflects these values. I look forward to continue to build and grow this community and to support its members in their journey to learn and to use R programming language.