Connect with CINECA - Saskia Hiltemann

Meet the CINECA team and see the people behind the scenes as part of our Connect with CINECA series.

This month we welcome Saskia Hiltemann (Twitter: @shiltemann, GitHub: @shiltemann) as our Connect with CINECA contributor. Saskia is a bioinformatician and a PhD student working in metagenomics at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, a core member of the Intergalactic Utilities Commission, and one of the two primary creators of the Galaxy Training Framework. Within the CINECA project she is co-Lead on Work Package 6, our dissemination and outreach work package, and a major contributor to Work Package 5 - Healthcare Interoperability and Clinical Applications. Although originally studying for an Astronomy degree, luckily for us she found her true vocation was in programming and bioinformatics.

Have you used any new tools or applications recently that have helped improve your workflow?

GitHub CLI (https://cli.github.com) has definitely streamlined my workflow for reviewing and contributing to projects on GitHub. Especially the PR checkout command has come in very handy.

Have you changed the way you work over the years? If so, how?

Recently I have started to put more of an emphasis on a healthy work-life balance. In our line of work it is easy to feel compelled to work all the time, but in the long run this is neither sustainable nor good for our emotional and physical well-being. This can be hard to do when you spend a lot of time online, therefore I have made sure to configure my devices to filter out work-related emails and notifications after-hours, and take active care in my interactions with coworkers not to place unrealistic expectations on them either.

What are you particularly passionate about in your research?

I am a strong proponent of Open Science. I believe science works best when scientific resources and results are accessible to everybody equally, without restrictions.  Therefore I try to make sure all my publications are open access, and all my code is freely licensed and developed in the open from the start, and take special care to promote inclusivity and diversity in my work. In my experience, this method of openness and inclusivity has improved my work greatly, thanks to all the constructive feedback and contributions I receive from the community as a result. Scientific research, in my view, should be collaborative, not competitive.

If you could have lunch with one person, who would it be?

Ada Lovelace. Not only was she a pioneer of computing science, she did it in a time when women were not considered capable of such things. I would love to hear her view of society at that time.

If you could choose anywhere for the next CINECA AGM, where would it be?

I am looking forward enormously to visiting South Africa at an upcoming AGM. Beyond that, I would love to have an AGM in Iceland, it is a stunningly beautiful country, and what could be better than stargazing and Northern Lights after a stimulating day of conference activities?