#MentorMonday: Christopher Marcum

Christopher Marcum, Ph.D.
Staff Scientist-Data Science Policy 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

We are working with Hoyin Chu on a project that will help automate and ease reporting requirements for NIH’s Data Access Committees (DAC). Specifically, we are building an R package and markdown template that scrapes dbGaP’s DAC reports, stores them locally, analyzes the datasets they contain, and then generates an IC-specific report complete with tables, notes, and graphics. The package will have general use across the NIH and will be freely available.  

A great opportunity to provide mentorship.

Our group, NIAID’s Office of Data Science and Emerging Technologies, had discussed automating the reporting requirements for our DAC earlier this year. When the Civic Digital Fellows program entered our radar, we thought that it would be a great opportunity to provide mentorship to a young scholar in data science while fulfilling an institute need that will eventually have NIH-wide impact. 

A keen mind to produce an excellent product.

Already our fellow has brought a keen mind for project design considerations. As R is not his primary programming language, he has also demonstrated excellent internal motivation to learn language and several packages during his fellowship. Chu is bringing a valuable set of programming, work ethic, and design skills and, as a result we will produce an excellent product by the end of the fellowship.