Not every data consultant starts in a spreadsheet. Some start in a field, pushing gas-sampling chambers into the ground at dawn, or in a molecular biology lab, running gel electrophoresis late into the evening. This is the story of how a career in research science became the foundation for a new chapter in data.
My scientific career began in earnest with a MSc thesis on Multiplex Terminal RFLP (M-TRFLP) — a molecular fingerprinting method for characterising soil microbial communities with high resolution. That early work, co-authored with Brajesh K. Singh and published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, laid the methodological groundwork for years of subsequent research.