Please join us in welcoming Chisom Obasih to the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries as the Open Science Postdoctoral Associate. Prior to joining the Libraries, Chisom was a Second Language Acquisition PhD student performing psycholinguistics research in the department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics (LCAL) at CMU, and prior to that, she was enrolled in the Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program in the department of Psychology at CMU.
We asked Chisom, who uses she/her/hers pronouns, a few questions about herself and her plans for her new role.
What are your goals for this year as our new Open Science Postdoctoral Associate?
My goals for this year include contributing to the efforts of the Open Science team to increase awareness of and attendance at our data and code support individual consultation services and open science-oriented workshops, particularly for undergraduate, graduate, and staff researchers. I’m also excited to attend these workshops myself to upskill in more areas of data analysis and data science while further integrating open science practices into my research workflow.
How has your prior experience prepared you for this role at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries?
Thanks to the excellent research training I received from my instructors and advisors in both the psychology and LCAL departments at CMU, I was exposed to open science practices from early on in my research career, which gave me some working knowledge of the open science tools available to me and helped me realize that the values I held for research already aligned with those of the open science movement. In terms of promoting and engaging in open science practices, some of the things I’ve done include creating and sharing data analysis and research material-making guides to peers and labmates, and making all of the data, materials, and code of my dissertation project openly available and accessible. In terms of engaging in educational services, I’ve been a research methods TA and undergraduate research mentor, I’ve served as a one-on-one consultant at the Student Academic Success Center’s Communication and Language Support program, and I’ve offered R coding and analysis support to classmates and peers seeking help. All of this, along with my experience as a CMU graduate student, positions me uniquely to understand and serve early career researchers at CMU and engage with them where they are at.
What projects are you excited to tackle in your first few months?
One thing I’m excited to pursue is contributing to the culture shift towards open research on campus, and I think that should start early in research training. I’m looking forward to collaborating with the Libraries liaisons to reach out to all the graduate programs across campus to assess their unique research support needs and figure out in which ways we can provide them with the resources to better understand and incorporate open science practices into their research training programs. I’m also looking forward to developing a new workshop for the Libraries to offer, inspired by my recent experiences in writing my dissertation in R Notebook. I think this is another aspect of open science that can be incorporated into the workflow of researchers who regularly use R.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Outside of work, I perform improv comedy at Arcade Comedy Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. I’m also learning the piano and how to sew, as well as brushing up on my Japanese. My fiance loves playing video games and I’ve recently started joining in and have convinced him to play Old School RuneScape with me. We also enjoy spending time watching new-to-us shows and are currently in our medical drama era.