Before I dive deep, let me give you a quick recap of my journey.
My last post was in 2022, when I spent time sharing my completed web development projects, lessons I learned, and tips for beginners. Since then, life has taken a few unexpected turns.
Today, November 2026, I find myself in a rather different place. I transitioned from web development to Data Science, with a growing interest in statistics, data analysis, and scientific research.
I graduated at the top of my Data Science class and have spent a lot of my time working on analytical projects. This year, another interesting opportunity came along; I applied for the Outreachy Internship program and made it into the contribution phase.
For the past 4 weeks, I have been contributing to the BugSigDB, an open-source project focused on curating microbial signatures reported in scientific literature. The project brings together findings from microbiome studies in a structured database, making them easier to explore, compare, and reuse for further research.
Interestingly, this turned out to be a natural fit for my background in Data Science, particularly the scientific research and writing component of my master's program.
This experience introduced me to a different side of data science: biological research, microbial data extraction, standardization, and curation. It also resonates with my final-year master's research, where I spent considerable time looking beyond code to understand how scientific findings are generated, interpreted, and documented.
In this series, I will take you through my journey with BugSigDB, what I have learned so far, some challenges I have encountered, and how you, too, can get started with data curation, even if you are coming from a completely different background.
