"Hi there! My name is Vania and I graduated with a BS in microbiology (honors) from the University of Washington in 2010, a Master in Public Health in infectious diseases from UC Berkeley in 2015, and a PhD in Geography at UC Santa Barbara in December 2023. I believe that my extensive experience in teaching and researching microbiology, public health, and geography, as well as my many years of applying geospatial analytical techniques towards public health and social science research, will make me a conscientious and capable tutor for you.

Over my academic career, I accrued four quarters teaching undergraduate geography courses both online and in-person. Prior to that, I also taught graduate courses in infectious diseases, and numerous undergraduate microbiology laboratory courses.

As a certified Software Carpentry instructor, I have also led introductory R and Python programming workshops for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars. Since 2017, I have worked to hone my skills in cross disciplinary teaching and curriculum design. At the Broom Center for Demography at UCSB, I created an advanced workshop for students interested in performing social network analysis using R. While living in the Republic of Malawi as an NIH Fogarty Global Health Fellow, I designed a three-day workshop teaching geospatial analysis in Python for the researchers of my host institution, Partners in Hope. This course was intended to provide research staff with the skills to use open-source tools for geospatial analysis on HIV transmission patterns across Malawi.

While earning my credentials to become a Software Carpentries instructor, I developed a deep appreciation for the egalitarian ethos of the open-source software environment. I became passionate about actively including traditionally underrepresented communities into the data science space. I am eager to bring this passion for open-source programming and geospatial science to any interested students at Wyzant." less...