# Draft of Spotlight page for Camila Rangel Smith

## What is your name and job title?

Hi, I'm Camila Rangel Smith and I'm a Research Data Scientist, I'm part of the Research Engineering Group (REG) at the Turing.
## Tell us about your journey before joining the Turing?

I am originally from Venezuela, where I did an undergraduate degree in Physics at the Universidad de los Andes. In 2010 I won a scholarship to do a PhD in experimental high energy physics in France, so I moved to Paris and worked on the search (and luckly the discovery) of the Higgs boson particle at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. After receiving my PhD from Université Paris Diderot, I moved to Sweden for a postdoc position in Uppsala University where I worked on searches for physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

After 6 years working in the field of high energy physics and moving countries a lot, I wanted to find some stability and explore new horizons in my career. That is when I found out that there is a job title called "Data Scientist"! Data is at the centre of experimental particle physics, and I was happy to learn that the skills I gained on my PhD could be used to solve a broader spectrum of problems.

After a couple of years working as a Data Scientist in the EdTech sector, in October 2018 I started my job at the Turing, and I could not be happier. I found my dream job!

## What are you working on at the moment?

One of the projects I am working on is called "Data Science for Sustainable Development". The goals of this project are to improve the monitoring of the resilience of ecological systems and provide early warning for environmental risks.

Resilience is a measure of the rate at which a system recovers from perturbations back to its original state. For systems that can approach a tipping point (where their current state loses stability and they transition to an alternative state), this is heralded by early warning signals of declining resilience.

Particularly; our team (composed of researchers from Exeter University and REG) has built an [open source software tool](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/monitoring-ecosystem-resilience) to study the time evolution of semi-arid vegetation patterns using remote sensing. With this tool we measure resilience by the use of quantitative methods to characterise the morphology of spatial patterns applied to images of patterned vegetation obtained using the Google Earth Engine platform. Currently we are monitoring many locations in the African Sahel region and plan to go global.

## What do you like the most about working at the Turing?

I love how much we get to learn!

Usually, in REG we work on two projects at the same time, these can be from very different fields in which we might not have previous experience, therefore there is a lot to learn. This can sound overwhelming, but we are always given the time and space to study and get up to speed with the new topics.

Also I have to mention how great our team is, I feel very lucky to get to work with such a smart, kind and generous group of people.

## Tell us about an interesting book you read recently?

During lockdown I joined an online reading club of the book [Data Feminism](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism) lead by the authors. This ran every Friday evening between April and June and was the perfect plan for those strange days.

The book talks about the principles of doing data science from an intersectional feminist perspective. It paints a powerful picture of how technology reflects and reproduces social hierarchies and injustices, and proposes a framework for working with data (whether is collecting it, cleaning it, analysing it, visualising it, making data-driven decisions, etc.) in a more responsible and ethical manner.

For me the book was a revelation. I have already started using the ideas learnt in my current projects, and plan to use the principles as a compass for my work in the future.

## Include a photo of yourself.