Naturejobs Podcast

Machine learning and data management skills can raise your scientific profile and open up career opportunities, Julie Gould discovers.As a biomedical science student, Jake Schofield felt frustrated at the length of time it took to repeat experiments, record results and manage protocols, with most of the work paper-based.In 2016 he and Jan Domanski, a biochemist with programming skills, launched Labstep, an online platform to help scientists record and reproduce experiments.Schofield, now Labstep's CEO, tells Julie Gould how launching a start-up and seeking investor funding has honed his business skills."Every step we've taken has been a huge learning experience," he says. "I wish there were more opportunities for scientists to try entreprenurial pursits. Scientific analytical problem-based thinking has so many parallels in the start-up world."Brian MacNamee, a computer scientist at University College Dublin, outlines the high value of data and its potential to solve science's reproducibility crisis, citing la