As I wrap up my internship at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), I’ve found myself thinking not just about the work I did this summer, but about how much I’ve learned, how many incredible people I’ve met, and how deeply this experience expanded my understanding of open science, collaboration, and community.
Coming into the summer, I didn’t fully know what to expect. I had some familiarity with GitHub, data analysis, and research, but open source? Documentation standards? Pull requests? These ideas were all new territory. Over the course of the internship, I explored all of them and more: drafting blog posts, editing documentation, building seminar graphs from scratch, contributing (and struggling!) with The Turing Way, and helping highlight BIDS events on social media and beyond.
One of my favorite projects was writing about the Digital Dunhuang Caves seminar. I loved diving into the content, revisiting the Q&A, and trying to capture the meaning of a project that preserves centuries of cultural heritage using modern tools. It was a reminder that data science isn’t just about code, but also about connection, memory, and impact. One image from the seminar still stands out to me: painted sculptures deep inside the caves, frozen in time, awaiting their digital preservation so future generations can see them in the same vivid detail.
Image: Painted sculptures residing in the caves.
I also learned a lot through my work on seminar attendance data. I got hands-on experience cleaning datasets, troubleshooting charts, and writing code to visualize patterns across departments and time. Getting to see the final heatmaps and bar graphs come together after weeks of debugging felt like a real win, and a very BIDS kind of win, where code meets community.
Beyond the technical projects, I’m grateful to have supported BIDS communications efforts: writing blog posts, designing social media content, covering events, and collaborating with the BIDMaP team. I’ve come to see how crucial it is to share and promote all the incredible work happening here. Without storytelling, so much innovation, creativity, and impact could go unseen. Publicizing BIDS projects not only celebrates the work itself, but also invites others, whether from academia, industry, or the open source world, to join in. Highlights of this included working with the Scientific Python community, collaborating with Jarrod Millman and Stéfan van der Walt, and seeing firsthand how communication fuels collaboration.
One of my final projects was to help document the BCEN Strategy Retreat hosted at Bakar Labs. It was inspiring to see so many teams from across Berkeley come together, some meeting for the first time, to talk honestly, connect, and cross reference ideas about how we can build a more collaborative approach to corporate engagement. It served as a small reminder that every conversation is a building block for bigger change in the community.
Eric Giegerich collaborates with Kirstie Whitaker at the BCEN Conference Ice Breaker. Photo: Dione L. Rossiter
As my time at BIDS comes to a close, I’m deeply grateful for the skills, connections, and experiences I’ve gained this summer. From collaborating with colleagues and the broader open source community to learning from researchers pushing the boundaries of data-driven discovery, this internship has shown me the power of open, collaborative science. A quick thank you to everyone who supported me this summer: Jamilah Karah, Kyle Cheng, Kirstie Whitaker, Lilli Wessling Hart, and Adrian Hill, as well as the entire BIDS team. Thank you for giving me space to learn, room to contribute, and encouragement every step of the way.
Photo: Jamilah Karah and Tyler Hawthorne review their notes during the GeoJupyter hackathon.
While my role as an intern may be ending, I’m excited to continue engaging with these projects and people who are making science more open, accessible, and impactful. I’m leaving with a better understanding of what open science looks like, and a strong desire to stay involved in whatever comes next.