Meet the Organizers
We are a team of R and data enthusiasts with different backgrounds and different points in our careers.
Aurélien Sallin
Economist @SWICA
Aurélien is a health economist and data scientist in the Health Services Research team at SWICA, where he combines his expertise in data analysis with a passion for improving healthcare. He also teaches data science with R at HSG. Aurélien discovered his love for R during his PhD in Economics. As an avid biker and runner, his favorite R package is—naturally—rStrava.
Gerlinde Theunissen
Social Data Scientist. Phd Researcher @Uni Konstanz
Gerlinde is a social data scientist who has just finished her doctorate in political science at the University of Konstanz. She uses geospatial data such as as satellite imagery to measure human activities and investigates contextual effects on human behavior. She has been programming in R since 2017 and her favorite R packages are the sf and tmap one.
Matt Bannert
Advanced Analytics @Helsana. Hacking for Science @ETH.
In recent years, Matt’s focus has been on integration of the open source data science stack into private, public and corporate ecosystems. He has a PhD in economics and enjoys teaching, coaching and breaking down content together. Due to his passion for time series Matt’s favorite R package is tsbox.
Mike Page
Data Scientist @cynkra
Mike Page is a data scientist at cynkra working mainly on open-source projects in the charity and public sectors. Mike holds a Masters by Research degree in psychoendocrinology and is interested in R package design, Shiny, and data visualisation. He believes R is a powerful and often misunderstood tool for data science, and is a strong advocate for its use.
Minna Heim
Data Science @UZH
Minna is a Data Science and Economics student at UZH and works for the Research Software Engineering and Economic Data Section at KOF-ETH. She started using R about 3 years ago during her bachelor’s in economics, where she first realised the potential that the accessible programming language R has for people in the (social) sciences.
Sereina M. Graber
Health Sciences @Helsana.
Sereina is a data scientist and researcher at the Department of Health Sciences at one of Switzerland’s largest health insurance companies. She is interested in drivers of drug prescribing trends and their implications. She has a background in biostatistics and a PhD in biology, and has been passionate about R programming for over a decade.