Hi! My name is Serena. Thank you for your interest in my work!
Here is a bit about myself and why I founded tMSKr.
I am an independent research scientist, with a background in biomedical engineering. I have worked and studied at many prestigious universities around the world: Stanford University and University of California San Francisco in the USA, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, University of Bern in Switzerland, and Politecnico di Milano in Italy, where I am originally from. This multicultural experience - still ongoing - has enormously enriched me, professionally and personally, and has made me open to new opportunities and exciting challenges.
I have several years of experience in medical image acquisition, image analysis, and biomechanics to investigate diseases of the musculoskeletal system, such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. I am very passionate about creating robust and well-documented workflows to standardize image acquisition procedures, develop computational pipelines, and manage scientific data.
During my work I have often had to face how fragmented research can be. The use of private data and in-house or proprietary software can constitute an obstacle in the progress of a research field. In several occasions, I had to rewrite code to be able to compare my new algorithms to existing ones, or to add some new feature to an existing workflow. This has always caused large frustration in me, and "reinventing the wheel" has always felt like an enourmous waste of effort and time.
A few years ago, I discovered Jupyter notebook, python, open data repositories, and the most modern tools for open and reproducible research. Starting to use them has changed the way I work in a crucial way. What I create now can be reused and enhanced by other scientists, collaborations with other scientist have become easier, and I got into a more productive self-discipline. I deeply believe that working in a more transparent way is the solution for a faster advancement of science.
For these reasons, I decided to found Transparent Musculoskeletal Research, with the aim to do and promote open and reproducible research, especially in the musculoskeletal imaging field, but not only. I am collaborating with universities in open data management projects, developing new open and reproducible workflows, and speaking at seminars and workshops. I have also started a YouTube channel where I teach how to do open and reproducibe research in practice.
If you want to know more about me, you can find more information about what I have achieved so far on my personal webpage, or just Get in touch with me! I will be more than happy to share with you what I know, be part of your new project, advise you, and discuss what works best for you!