I am writing to express my interest in the Community Engagement Manager position. I was referred by my advisor, Dr. C. Titus Brown.
I learned about Seven Bridges in 2018 when I served as a postdoc focused on community engagement for the NIH-funded Data Commons Pilot Phase Program. I co-organized six in-person meetings to bring together scientists and engineers to build cloud computing tools for biomedical genomic research. I also performed code reviews for tools that were in development, but funding for the pilot program was cut before we could build a training program.
Fast-forward to 2022, I am finally helping build and implement a training program in my current role as a postdoc for the Common Fund Data Ecosystem. Our goal is to teach scientists and clinicians how to find, access, and analyze large genomic datasets. I have developed and taught UNIX and R workshops to teach the basics of command-line scripting and data analysis. I have also taught lessons developed by my coworkers, such as Introduction to Amazon Web Services, and I’ve helped colleagues publish tutorials on our training website at https://training.nih-cfde.org/en/latest/. I also perform tests on our data search portal (https://app.nih-cfde.org/), including making sure that files can be imported into CAVATICA using DRS IDs.
When I was younger, “Community Engagement Manager” wasn’t a job that I dreamed of having because I had never heard of it. I dreamed of being a teacher or scientist because I knew what those things were. Indeed, I have 15 years of experience teaching at the college level, and 10 years of experience conducting genome-scale research. However, during my PhD, I was given the opportunity to organize several community-focused events, and this led to community engagement focuses post-doc positions. As I look toward the future, I know that my past experiences and current interests are well suited to a career as a manager focused on community engagement.
I am familiar with the tools and workflows Seven Bridges is building to decrease the time it takes to find, process, and analyze genomic data to make scientific discoveries and solve biomedical problems, and I am eager to learn more about the company, people, and products and how I can contribute to community growth if I am selected as a potential candidate for this position. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you, Rayna M. Harris, PhD