rOpenSci | rOpenSci Champions Program Teams: Meet Carolina Pradier and Athanasia Monika Mowinckel

rOpenSci Champions Program Teams: Meet Carolina Pradier and Athanasia Monika Mowinckel

We designed the rOpenSci Champions Program with a mentorship aspect. Mentoring plays a significant role in the growth and development of both mentors and mentees alike. In our program, each Champion has a mentor who accompanies them during their training and development of their project.

In this series of blog posts, we introduce you to the ten teams of this first cohort and what they will be working on in the program.

Meet Carolina Pradier from Argentina and Athanasia Monika Mowinckel from Norway!

🔗 Carolina Pradier - Champion

Profile photo of Carolina Pradier

Carolina Pradier

My name is Carolina Pradier, I am an economist and data scientist. I have a degree in Economics, and I am currently finishing my Master’s degree in Labour Studies, both at the University of Buenos Aires.

I work as a research and teaching assistant at CEPED-UBA and I’m also an active member of Ecofeminita’s economics and data team (ecofemidata) and maintainer of the eph R package. Throughout the rOpenSci Champions Program I intend to enhance the eph R package (reorganizing the package, reducing its dependencies, improving the package’s functions’ processing speed, upgrading the user experience, etc.).

I applied to the Program in order to improve my skills and bring new tools to the social scientists’ communities in which I am actively involved and thus strengthen our capacities to transform reality. Furthermore, I intend to bring researchers from my country closer to the R community and hope to meet new professionals I can collaborate with in the future. Needless to say, I am particularly excited about the prospect of participating in a program aimed at making the R community more inclusive.


🔗 Athanasia Monika Mowinckel - Mentor

Profile photo of Athanasia Monika Mowinckel

Athanasia Monika Mowinckel

My name Athanasia (Mo) Mowinckel, and I hold a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, and am based in Oslo, Norway. I was born in Athens, Greece, of a Cypriot mother and a Norwegian father, and moved to Norway with my family when I was 4. Here, I now work as a staff scientist and Research Software Engineer at the Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo.

A lot of my work centers around creating data pipelines and work flows for my colleagues. In this work, I often choose to create R packages, which is one of the main programming languages in my field. I also create JavaScript applications and Hugo websites depending on the need of the project. I have been a reviewer for an rOpenSci package as well as for several JOSS submissions of R packages. I am currently part of the R-Ladies Global leadership, after 4 years in the R-Ladies Global team as part of website development, and 5 years as chapter organiser in Oslo.

I am a mentor in the rOpenSci Champions program and am looking forward to learning about mentor roles and to being inspired by new R users expanding their community roles. I’m hoping the Champions program will give me new insight into how another generation interacts with the community either as reviewers or as developers, and to learn with them about how we can open up and enable more users to take part in our activities. I also look forward to connecting and interacting with other mentors and learning about how to be a good counsellor to others.

Carolina and Mo are already working on the eph package. We’re excited to see how it goes! Be sure to not miss the next series of introductions