For the past 10 years, Meghan Verschoor has worked in the biotechnology industry as a medical scientist. She holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in biomedical science and a Ph.D. in medicine. As part of a post-doctoral fellowship, Meghan developed novel therapies that use genetically engineered viruses to attack cancer cells. Since then, she's been working on new types of personalized immune cell treatments.
Meghan felt it was time to progress and take her discoveries to the next level, creating real impact through her work. Just over a year ago—with the steady incorporation of more advanced machine learning and AI technology in her industry—she decided she needed to upskill with data science. Learning to code was one of the essentials, as there's a demand for custom web apps that deliver critical solutions or automated analysis of clinical research data.
Running a simple Google search produced a list of popular e-learning platforms, which is how she happened upon 365 Data Science. The name popped up often in her research, as many social media users recommended it for data science education.
I didn't like some of the platforms that were notebook-driven because I found it hard to stay engaged and motivated where there wasn't a human element to my learning. I found 365 Data Science and really enjoyed how the platform uses courses presented by experts in the field and was happy to see a big variety of courses to help boost my knowledge base.
Meghan describes herself as a visual learner—she needs video content to see and grasp new concepts. She found the platform to be one-of-a-kind in quality and engagement. "365 Data Science is the only platform that provides high-quality content from experts in the field that is visually engaging and makes learning fun," she shares.
Since it was Python skills she was after, Meghan wasted no time diving straight into coding courses. She felt particularly drawn to the Python Programmer Bootcamp with Giles McMullen-Klein. Despite the challenges, she enjoyed the instructor's teaching style and the practice tasks he gave as assignments.
[The Python Programmer Bootcamp] was so comprehensive, but also taught in a stepwise progression that made it easy to learn and follow along with the concepts that were introduced. I also really liked how challenging and fun some of the practice problems were, it really helped to keep me engaged in the material.
The course was such a great experience for Meghan that she went ahead with several other topics, such as Statistics and Mathematics. The material was, again, easy to follow and offered her plenty of useful practical knowledge. "It was really valuable to refresh what I had learned ages ago in university," she exclaims.
Using what she learned on the platform to level up her skillset, Meghan soon landed her dream job as a clinical data scientist in a computational biology team. She now uses Python almost every day to wrangle large amounts of clinical research data, as well as R to conduct statistical analyses.
She recommends the 365 platform for anyone looking to learn the fundamentals or level up their data science career progression.
The 365 Data Science program is a fantastic way to learn a brand-new skill or refresh knowledge in computer science, statistics, and math. There are also several foundational courses in data literacy and governance, which I truly believe would benefit everyone to better understand the technology and software that we use daily. The programs are extremely well-paced, letting you take as much time as you need for each concept, and gives you a ton of opportunities to practice your skills with fun, real-world problems.
Of course, Meghan also plans on continuing her own learning journey as there's always something new to add to her toolbox. Right now, her sights are set on upgrading her skills in machine learning. In her opinion, data skills are highly valuable and can be applied to any industry. She encourages anyone who wants to give data science a try because the outcome is well worth it.
If you are motivated, you can learn how to code and build your mathematical knowledge to achieve your goals. It's a very rewarding job where you are improving each day—it's easy to get out of bed in the morning when you love what you do!
