Bob Zhao is a rising senior at Washington University in St. Louis studying economics and computer science. This summer, he was a Coding it Forward Civic Digital Fellow working with the STRIDES Initiative team at the Center for Information Technology (CIT). Zhao worked remotely from Memphis, Tenn., with co-fellow Annie Wang and mentors Nick Weber and Joel Peterson.
“Our main project was very collaborative—we spent a large chunk of our summer working on the STRIDES web presence,” Zhao said. “Annie and I thought about how to develop a website that has more in-depth information about STRIDES best practices, training, information, news and doing so in a user-friendly manner.”
The STRIDES Initiative provides cost-effective access to industry-leading partners to help advance biomedical research. By leveraging the STRIDES Initiative, NIH and NIH-funded institutions can begin to create a robust, interconnected ecosystem that breaks down silos related to generating, analyzing, and sharing research data.
Most offices take on one fellow to work on a specific project, but Weber and Peterson were intentional in taking two fellows who would work collaboratively on a project along with independent tasks.
“We needed two different avenues to tackle this project and I really liked the idea of having fellows work on their project collaboratively,” explained Peterson. “Annie and Bob…do remarkable work together and I think they bring the best out of each other whereas independently, I don't know that this project would have nearly the output that we've seen from these two.”
Zhao spent last summer as an intern with the Office of Personnel Management working on web design, and he appreciated a different perspective working on the STRIDES website.
“I was excited to see some of the agency work that the STRIDES team is doing because they operate off of a different model,” Zhao shared. “A lot of the work the STRIDES team is doing is within the context of NIH, and so having that understanding of how those two things intersected was something I was interested in exploring.”
His time with CIT showed him that he enjoys a role that lets him “flex both sides of my brain in terms of solving technical problems, but then also getting to understand how those things are relevant to people that are actually using what the team is building.”
After two civic tech internships, Zhao is confident that a government role is a good fit for his career.
“I ultimately know this is where I want to be in the future, and I think getting a perspective on something that was very different from what I experienced last summer helped me understand the landscape of things,” Zhao said.
The Office of Data Science Strategy at NIH works with institutes and centers like CIT and with Coding it Forward to bring fresh perspectives to tackle computational challenges facing the biomedical research workforce each summer. ODSS will feature fellows and mentors from the 2020 cohort throughout the summer. Meet Bob's co-fellow, Annie.
