Research Software Engineer Career Award to Develop Open Science Tools for Environmental Health

This proposal seeks support for Michelle Audirac, as she advances her career in research software engineering to advance data science and accelerate environmental health research. Audirac is a Senior Data Science Specialist in the National Studies on Air Pollution and Health (NSAPH) group co-directed by Dr. Danielle Braun and Prof. Francesca Dominici at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). The group applies statistical methodologies to uncover the health impacts of environmental and extreme weather exposures, providing insights at the intersection of environmental science and public health. Audirac is currently leading data science engineering and research software efforts in several NIH-funded research programs conducted at NSAPH. Audirac's responsibilities include (a) managing data operations by automating software for data processing, including the development of new data pipelines and enhancing scalability of research workflows for high-performance computing and big data scenarios by leveraging emerging trends and technologies (b) mentoring early-career data scientists in best software engineering practices, including Development and Operations (DevOps), coding best practices, version control, data/metadata documentation, and agile project management; and (c) advancing dissemination of research software that enhance the accessibility, reproducibility, and efficiency of data science workflows, with a focus on creating FAIR resources. Audirac has presented her contributions in research software meetings, such as the United States Research Software Engineer (US-RSE) meeting, open source conferences, such as the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC), and is pursuing the publication of papers focused on her software contributions.