Introducing Our First 2022 Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!
In January, 2022, we began training for a new cohort of community leaders to become certified as Instructor Trainers. These are the people who co-teach Instructor Training events, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program as a whole. With 16 people, we are proud to say that this is the largest and most globally and linguistically diverse cohort we have trained to date!
Training the next generation of Carpentries Instructors is important work! We are so proud to have these amazing people joining our Trainer community and advancing our mission around the world.
Please Welcome our New Trainers!
Annajiat Alim Rasel
I am Annajiat Alim Rasel, a Sr. Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering under the School of Data and Sciences (SDS), Brac University, Bangladesh. I usually teach problem-solving skills using Java and Python while trying to explore the exciting fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Parallel, Distributed, and High-Performance Computing (HPC). I feel privileged to be a part of The Carpentries community and am trying to gain more knowledge, skills, and experience. It is amazing to work on Open Source materials and good teaching practices. We hope to build a Carpentries community in Bangladesh. We are trying to learn more about FAIR and CARE principles while trying to promote diversity, localization, and accessibility.
Christian Knüpfer
I am working at the Digital Research Competence Center of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany. My background is Computer Science, in particular Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation. In the competence center I advise and support researchers in using digital tools for their work. Furthermore, I give courses in programming and related topics. The Carpentries Trainer Training I just completed, is helping me to further develop my teaching skills.
Cora Assmann
I am a research assistant and I work at the Research Data Management Helpdesk at the University of Jena (Germany) and in the Thuringian Competence Network for Research Data Management (TKFDM). In my daily work, I advise researchers on research data management and give workshops on RDM for PhD students, researchers and professors. I am a freshly badged instructor and trainer (May 2022). I hope I can help in the next few years to make the Carpentries more known in the middle part of Germany.
Danielle Sieh
Hello! I am the Workshop Administrator at The Carpentries with a background in Early Childhood Education and peer Instruction. When I first learned about The Carpentries, I was so impressed with the mission, vision, and pedagogical strategies elevated by this organisation. So many of the teaching practices that I learned throughout the years and most admire are intertwined with the way Instructors are taught through The Carpentries’ training. It really pulled me in and made me want to somehow be a part of it all. I am so excited to contribute to the training community and for the opportunity to learn and grow with people who are as passionate about teaching as I am.
Inigo Aldazabal Mensa
Physicist by education, computer scientist by “degeneration”, I work as Scientific Computing Specialist at the Materials Physics Center (CFM) in Donostia - San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain. This is a small (~150 people) basic physics research center from both the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). I hold a PhD in Computational Materials Science which allowed me to, along the years and among other things, become familiar with scientific computing good practices in a self educated manner. I became in touch with the (back then) Software Carpentry community completely by chance in a local Python conference in 2015, through a keynote speaker who happened to be an Instructor, and I became engaged ever since. Being myself self educated in what computing matters apply, it was immediately clear to me the Carpentries Workshops filled an essential gap in the research community, and I started straight forward to host workshops, become an instructor, and coaching many people around to also become helpers and instructors. Thus a small Spanish community grew from this and most, if not all, the Spanish Carpentries Workshops have been up to now direct descendants from our local efforts. I typically host and instruct a couple of local workshops a year, one for our research community and other University wide. I always like bringing at least one new instructor from abroad so that we can learn from each others’ techniques, share knowledge and tips, and build up the community. This besides instructing from time to time in other workshops around Europe. Now, becoming an Instructor Trainer is a further step for me in helping the Carpentries community to grow thus allowing us to reach and help the most people possible.
Karen Colbert
I am the General Education Department Chair and Lead Math Faculty at Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College (KBOCC). I’m also a PhD student in Computational Science & Engineering at Michigan Technological University. My research interests center on bridging equity gaps in STEM for black and indigenous communities, for both scholars and community members. My current work at the tribal college includes developing Indigenous Contextualization into the math curriculum and pedagogical developments for teaching adult learners using growth mindset and Indigenous ways of knowing for all courses. I’m excited to introduce the Carpentries Workshops to the tribal college community and surrounding areas as an instructor, coach, and host. These workshops fully align with many of the teaching aspects of tribal college mission statements. Introducing Data and Software Carpentries workshops to the tribal reservation will open up more opportunities for our Native scholars to use powerful statistical software tools and learn about data ownership and data management from the Indigenous Sovereignty perspective. I am currently working to develop the KBOCC Institute for Teaching and Learning and the KBOCC Center for Research and Data Management that will host the community workshops to share the Carpentries work.
Md Intekhabul Hafiz
Intekhab is an experienced IT and Telecommunications systems consultant, trainer, and engineer working extensively with very large data systems. He is also engaged in training novices and professionals on programming techniques and best practices. While a postgraduate student at the School of Data and Sciences at Brac University, he got introduced to the Carpentries community. Since then, he has been acquiring an invaluable amount of skills and techniques for which he is grateful to the Carpentries community. He is looking forward to contributing to the Carpentries in trainer and instructor capacities to bolster the development of scientific analyses everywhere. He hopes to extend the Carpentries community in Bangladesh, especially among those researchers and institutions addressing the SDGs.
In his spare time, he encourages kids to be environmentally conscious by practicing the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” techniques in regular activities. He introduces computer programming to children and assists in developing their discrete mathematics and programming skills. He finds most Carpentries teaching strategies very effective even at this level.
Rafi Ullah
I am Assistant Professor of Physics at LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan where I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in physics and advise research students. My research focuses on problems in condensed matter physics such as radiation-matter interaction. I have enjoyed teaching the Carpentries workshops and now taking it further looking forward to building a Carpentries community in Pakistan.
Holly Bik
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences and Institute of Bioinformatics at the University of Georgia. My research interests are focused on free-living nematodes in deep-sea sediments, with an emphasis on “computational taxonomy”, host-associated microbiomes, and environmental drivers of biodiversity for microbial species. I first encountered the Carpentries as a biology postdoc struggling to teach myself scientific programming skills, and I became immediately enamored with the open-source curricula and inclusive global community. Teaching Carpentries technical workshops has helped me learn better programming skills, and I am excited to become a Trainer to further improve my skills as a teacher. At UGA, I am currently managing our growing institutional partnership with the Carpentries, and in the upcoming years I will be working to build a bioinformatics “community of practice” on campus. As a Trainer, I am excited to build a strong local community of certified instructors and expand our technical workshop offerings across all career stages (undergraduates to faculty researchers) and across historically underrepresented groups in STEM fields.
Karl Benedict
I am a Professor and Director of Research Data Services and Information Technology Services in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences at the University of New Mexico. My academic background is in Anthropology, with a focus in Archaeology, in which I worked for 18 years as a field archaeologist and archaeological data analyst, culminating my 2004 completion of my doctoral research project in which I integrated environmental, paleoclimate, and archaeological data in a large-scale analysis of spatial patterns of prehistoric occupation of northeastern Arizona. In the late 1990’s I had already started my transition to working in more broad data management and analysis, with a particular focus on geospatial data and web application development in support of data discovery, access, and use. Following 15 years of work in an applied geospatial research center as a research scientist and six years as the center’s director I moved into UNM’s library to direct our newly created research data services program. After joining the library I built on previous experience teaching credit courses in quantitative analysis and open source geospatial technologies by developing and teaching library instruction sessions related to data management, ultimately co-developing Coffee & Code, a data science workshop series that our program started in 2017. After helping to organize our first Software Carpentry workshop at UNM, in 2019 I was certified as a Carpentries instructor and have served as an instructor and helper for multiple Carpentries workshops since the spring of 2019. We have integrated many of the pedagogical principles learned from the Carpentries program into our other workshops, and look forward to applying the deeper understanding of the Carpentries pedagogy gained through instructor trainer certification to both the training of new Carpentries instructors and in our continued work in developing our other workshop offerings.
Martino Sorbaro
I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the Artificial Intelligence center of ETH, the Swiss Federal Polytechnic of Zurich, working on topics at the edge between natural and artificial neural networks. I’m originally from Italy and studied for my PhD in Edinburgh, Scotland. My teaching work as a Carpentries instructor is not part of my job description: I do it because I deeply care about effective teaching methods and their impact on the world, so I’m eager to teach and improve my teaching skills. Within The Carpentries, I’m also one of the people driving an effort to build a larger Carpentries community in Italy and in the Italian language. As a Trainer I would like to focus on improving Carpentries presence in developing countries and more isolated or less privileged environments anywhere.
Michael Culshaw-Maurer
I’m a postdoctoral researcher working with CyVerse at the University of Arizona and the Carpentries Core Team. I’m an ecologist by training, and first got introduced to The Carpentries as a PhD student, where I got involved with teaching a full-term course based on the Data Carpentry R for Ecology lesson. I later took Instructor Training and was blown away by the fact that the best pedagogical training I got as a grad student came from this two-day workshop. I currently work on a handful of Carpentries and CyVerse projects, including work with the Carpentries Incubator and Carpentries Lab lesson development and lesson peer review processes. I am thrilled to become a Trainer and can’t wait to continue paying it forward to this wonderful community that has given me so much over the years!
Mike Serafin
I am a librarian at the University of Toronto Mississauga. My role has two parts to it, one being a liaison librarian for two departments: The Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and for Mathematical & Computational Sciences. I am also a Library Technologies Librarian, responsible for many aspects of technology within the library. Currently, I am working on rolling out our Digital Exploration Lab, which is a lab that has 3D printers and virtual reality equipment that can be used for various teaching, learning, and research endeavors. I teach various technology-related workshops, both Carpentries and non-Carpentries. Regardless of what I am teaching, I love using the Carpentries philosophies and strategies.
Philipp Matthias Schäfer
I am a research assistant at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena with a background in mathematics and computer science. As a member of the university’s competence center for digital research, I teach and support other researchers on topics of research software development. Through our university becoming a member, I found my way to the Carpentries. Having participated in instructor training and instructor trainer training, I plan to contribute not only through applying and extending the acquired skills, but also through developing and maintaining lessons, currently working on an introduction to the use of GitLab.
Samniqueka Halsey
I am Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Health in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA. I earned my Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology, Graduate Minor in College Teaching and Masters of Business Administration from the University of Illinois-Urbana - Champaign. I hold a Masters of Science in Biological Sciences from Chicago State University and a Bachelors of Science from Northeastern Illinois University. My research stresses the importance of using long-term data sets, GIS, and remote sensing. I use computational approaches to understand the mechanisms involved in the patterns we see in nature. Most of my work involves using modeling approaches to delineate how spatial and temporal changes in ecological interactions influence a focal species. I hold a particular interest in informing management actions with my models.
Yared Abera Ergu
I’m a lecturer and partly researcher working in Ambo University, Ethiopia and the Carpentries IDC Member and Library Advisory Group Member (since 2019). I have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Information Technology. I am also a certified Higher Education Leadership Trainer by training, and first got introduced to The Carpentries in 2018 and in this same year I became a certified carpentry instructor. Currently, I am Dean at the School of Technology and Informatics, Ambo University, Ethiopia. My experience with carpentry so far, it’s really amazing and one of the best time and resource investments I have made in my career. The trend has taken me to the next level of thinking; both personally and with communal mentality-Ubuntu. I am excited to become a Trainer and can’t wait to continue playing my role to make the Carpentry’s way of training as the next model of standardized training and continuous learning.