Data Science and Open Data Access

A lot of research time and money is spent collecting data. However, these data are often lost, not usable due to poor record keeping/being behind a paywall, or the analysis cannot be replicated. I am determined to change this through my own work and hope to help others do the same.

Formal Data Analysis Consulting Experience

1. Data Analysis and Visualization GAA for the UBC Library: I provide one on one consultation for UBC students, staff, and Alumni who need help performing their data analysis in R and SPSS. Additionally, I develop and deliver workshops for the UBC Research Commons aimed at beginner and intermediate R users.
2. Living Data Project Data Rescue Intern: I cleaned over 20 years of field data, which directly lead to an open access publication in Ecology.
3. Illumina Data Analyst for the publication "Manipulation of the seagrass-associated microbiome reduces disease severity".

Other Data Accessibility Projects

1. Gathering baseline macoralgae data at an urban intertidal site: There is a lack of publicly accessible baseline data in ecology in general. My colleagues and I are working to change this for our local macroalgae (big seaweeds) by conducting monthly transect sampling at Stanley Park. We publish our data on an open access database and I developed an RShiny app for easier data visualization.

Kelps and Microbial Ecology

Kelps are vital for the health of temperate coastlines, providing habitat, food, and modifying water conditions within their canopy. Additionally, kelp farming is a growing industry, already worth billions of dollars annually. However, wild and farmed kelps are vulnerable to climate change. Thus, these valuable services kelp provide are at risk.

Microbes, bacteria in particular, have been used as a toolkit to increase terrestrial crop resistance to unfavorable conditions for a long time now, but we have a much more limited understanding of the bacterial community of kelps and other marine life than in terrestrial systems.

Through my PhD thesis work in the Parfrey lab, I am directly addressing this lack of understanding by conducting highly replicated lab and field studies and partnering with the kelp growing industry. I am passionate about challenging established assumptions about how kelps will respond to climate change. I pull in other researchers' datasets to stress test my own findings and work in R to produce highly replicable and accessible data analysis pipelines.

Thesis questions and goals

1. How does salinity alter the microbiome of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima)? *Currently available as a pre-print on BioRXiv.
2. How do kelps acquire their microbiome in the wild and throughout the production process?
3. Characterizing kelp diseases: Kelp diseases are already killing up to 30% of farmers' crops yearly . Disease occurrence is predicted to increase as the kelp industry grows and as climate change worsens . I am currently working on characterizing "pink spots on spools" (see this blog post), but I am interested in any and all kelp diseases! Watch me talk about the "pink spots on spools".

Community outreach

Throughout my PhD, I have had the privilege to work with many community scientists. The project that best showcases this is my work characterizing the diatom, bacterial (16S), and other microeukaryote (18S) community of Eelgrass of Galiano Island.

I collected samples with community scientists (for Illumina and scanning electron microscopy) as part of a research project with IMERSS, a local non-profit organization. I was responsible for the Illumina side of the project and the community partners were responsible for the scanning electron microscopy part of the project. Together, we compared the pros and cons of each technique and present our findings in a manuscript under revision at the Canadian Journal of Botany. We also presented our findings at community events, where community members could view the surface of an Eelgrass leaf live and ask use questions about what they saw.

Publications

See my Google Scholar page for the most up-to-date list. If you are not able to access a publication for any reason, please feel free to email me (sschenk at mail.ubc.ca) and I will send it to you.

Triathlon

I really enjoy being active and being outside. Triathlon is a great sport because it combines both of those. I was on the 2023-2024 UBC Triathlon Sports Club team and raced the 2024 70.3 Ironman World Championshios in Taupō, New Zealand.

Pets

I have two bunnies (Blackberry and Hawthorne) that I adopted form the Vancouver Rabbit Rescue and Advocacy, a local rescue in Vancouver.

Contact me by email sschenk at mail.ubc.ca

Follow me on GitHub, LinkedIn, or BlueSky.