Personal Profile –

Claudia Offner

Who are you and what do you do?

Currently, I am a Research Assistant at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and work on their IMMANA programme, which focuses on innovating new methodologies and metrics for agriculture and nutrition action.

What is a normal day for you like?

Normally, I work on a variety of data analysis tasks in a number of software packages. Depending on the project I am on, I may be working in Rstudio performing a spatial-temporal data analysis, or perhaps in Pycharm evaluating Machine Learning classifiers or even in ArcMap creating dynamic choropleths maps to visualize data. Other days, I may be reading up on past studies for literature reviews or working in Eppi Reviewer to compile a Evidence Gap Map.

What is your favourite thing about the subject you study/your job? 

What I enjoy most about working with geospatial data is the ability to localise and clearly identify where points of information are generated. I am most interested in modelling complex phenomena and collective behaviour so being able to analyze geotagged data and its relation to space and time is very enjoyable to me.

When did you know you wanted to pursue a career in the space sector? 

Personally, I had never thought about working in any space-related field. However, this changed after attending a Climate-KIC summer school program that focused on integrating satellite data and business solutions to climate change-related issues. A year after that programme I found that I had grown increasingly interested in analyzing satellite data, so I decided to study it further.

What did you study at school? 

My first degree was an MA in Psychology and Business with the University of Edinburgh. Currently, I am finishing my part-time MSc in Geospatial Sciences at UCL alongside my work.

What has your journey so far been like?

So far my journey has been full of surprises and it will likely have many more. I have no regrets in the decisions I have made that have led me to what I am doing and I am fully embracing the trajectory I have found myself on.

What advice would you give to your younger-self?

Trust in yourself and be open to new opportunities, especially if they are daunting.

Click here to learn more about Claudia’s work.