A Fantastic Event: MQ and DATAMIND Workshop and Meeting

Hosted by MQ and DATAMIND the October data science meeting and workshop was a chance for researchers at various stages of their careers to get together, meet, speak and network.

One attendee, Sarah Cook, a research fellow at Imperial College London within the Respiratory Electronic Health Record Group in the School of Public Health, kindly shares her experience of attending the event.

Thank you for sharing your experience Sarah. Did you enjoy the event?

It was a fantastic day with a wide range of topics.

Tell us about yourself and your current research.

I am, myself as a researcher, currently funded by an NIHR Three Research Schools Mental Health Fellowship. This is part of the NIHR’s Mental Health Research Programme on improving mental health and wellbeing in underserved communities through collaborative research. My current research project is about health inequalities in people with alcohol use disorder and type 2 diabetes using electronic health record data within the UK.

How did you find out about the event?

A colleague at work who monitors our teams twitter (X) account first made me aware of the event and passed on the information to me as something of potential interest.

Why did it appeal to you?

When I looked at the event information I thought this sounded like something really relevant to my research and it would be a good way to connect with other people with similar research interests. I also suggested my PhD student sign up too and we went together on the day.

What happened on the day itself?

There were people presenting in topics very close to my own area in electronic health records and it was great to link up with people during the event. I’ve been in email contact with a couple of people I met on the day already.

What were the highlights of the day for you?

It was also a great opportunity to hear about other areas of data research including the use of social media and app data and the ethics of using gaming for research with children. I learnt a lot about these areas of research, which are likely to be more and more important for research of the future.

What did you learn about MQ as a result of the event?

Before the event I was aware of MQ as a funder of mental health research but this was the first time I attended one of their events.

Will you attend the next MQ and DATAMIND event?

It was a very positive experience and I would definitely attend another event like this in the future.

Find out more about the next events MQ are hosting by joining the network of researchers.

This blog post was originally published on www.mqmentalhealth.org/