Rosie Wakeham
Head of Training at Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)
As Head of Training, Rosie is playing a key part in developing HDR UK’s role in providing training and learning opportunities to nurture the skills of new and existing health data scientists.
This is of fundamental importance to HDR UK which, as the national institute for health data science, wants to ensure that talented people from every background and all four home nations can thrive in this rapidly-advancing field.
Rosie graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in biological sciences in 2013 before going on to work for a wildlife and conservation charity, doing a stint in PR, then spending three years with the Royal Society of Biology.
While at the RSB she helped shape the society’s professional development offering by organising its suite of online and in-person training courses and leading other initiatives for example its work around apprenticeships, very much laying the foundations for her position at HDR UK.
This included engaging with master’s and doctoral students and early career scientists like those HDR UK works with through its MSc and PhD programmes, as well as its workshops, online HDR UK Futures platform, apprenticeships, internships and other initiatives.
Rosie says she was drawn to working for HDR UK because of all that health data science can achieve – she is particularly fascinated by the idea of using health-related data to answer some of the big questions facing healthcare in this country.