I have no idea what I'm doing: open and transparent leadership in academia

Slides for Kirstie's talk at the EMBL Inspirational Seminar Series in Heidelberg on 8 November 2019

Abstract: We know everyone's story is curated. It's one of the most important aspects of self care: to remember that people don't post on social media their mediocre days or achievements! But telling stories are also powerful ways to affect change. To connect with people and create a richer tapestry of experiences to inspire and empower a diverse community of researchers. In this talk I will describe my journey from Physics, to Neuroscience, to Data Science. I'll thread my personal experiences of dancing, skiing, cycling, networking and activism through what looks - after the fact - like a well planned 18 years since leaving high school. I will finish with some visions of ethical, transparent and collaborative working in the future of academic research.

Bio: Kirstie Whitaker is a research fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (London, UK) and senior research associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Her work covers a broad range of interests and methods, but the driving principle is to improve the lives of neurodivergent people and people with mental health conditions. Dr Whitaker uses magnetic resonance imaging to study child and adolescent brain development and participatory citizen science to educate non-autistic people about how they can better support autistic friends and colleagues. She is the lead developer of The Turing Way, an openly developed educational resource to enable more reproducible data science. Kirstie is a passionate advocate for making science "open for all" by promoting equity and inclusion for people from diverse backgrounds, and by changing the academic incentive structure to reward collaborative working. She is the chair of the Turing Institute's Ethics Advisory Group, a Fulbright scholarship alumna and was a 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science. Kirstie was named, with her collaborator Petra Vertes, as a 2016 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. You can find more information at her lab website: whitakerlab.github.io.