#infrastructure team

INTERVIEW with BRIAN GORGES: COS Developer

We interviewed Bryan Gorges this week. Bryan is a developer here at the COS and has travelled all the way from Hawaii to come work with us. Bryan is into Ornithology, Fencing, and Open Science, check out what he has to say about Open Science and the COS. **

Where are you from?

Cheyenne, WY

Where did you go to school?

I attended the University of Wyoming and received my Computer Engineering BS. I am currently pursuing my Masters with Georgia Tech for Computer Science.

Do you have any particular scientific interests?

My personal favorite science interests are Ornithology (mostly birdwatching), and Astronomy.

Cool! Before we get into it, can you tell us one fun fact about yourself

Despite a high-tech career and reading science fiction, I enjoy fencing and archery, the less gadgets the better.

Okay Bryan, can you tell us what Open Science means?

Open Science means a sustainable ecosystem of scientific discoveries not impeded by what has grown up around the scientific method, specifically the inapproachable, unreproducible who-knows-if-this-is-actual-science part that the public is afraid of.

What drew you to COS?

Directly working to open science.

So what do you spend most of your time doing at the COS?

Learning, coming from moving telescopes means that web development requires quite a bit of diving in and figuring out what’s going on.

The COS works primarily on the OSF, can you tell me what the OSF is and why is it important?

The Open Science Framework is the “flagship product,” and it is an attempt (looks pretty successful) to make openness and collaboration easier for all fields of scientists is extraordinarily important.

What are you adding to the OSF to make it better for those goals?

Wiki notifications, collaborators can see when one another update the wiki. This will really help if one is waiting for another to finish adding a section.

Do you like living in Charlottesville, VA?

Yes, despite the cold weather immediately after moving from Hawaii, it has been nice. Lots more of everything.

I can imagine, but Hawaii probably has more interesting better birds.

Listening to any interesting music recently?

Traditional Celtic instrumental. Looking to go to Boxwood in Williamsburg next month with my cello.

We had the opportunity to interview Fabian von Feiltzsch. He’s a cool guy who grew up on a farm, teaches robotics, and values Open Science.  Hometown: Mostly Amissville, VA (grew up on a farm, so town sounds a little weird)

Educational background: Graduated from UVa in December with a BA in Computer Science and a BA in Cognitive Science

What is one fun fact about yourself?

I mentor FIRST Robotics Competition team 3373. The FRC is a really fun way to get high school kids involved in programming and engineering in a really fast-paced and informal way.

So, what is Open Science?

Open science is efficient science. It is science operating the way it should. Right now, we have a huge amount of knowledge that is being produced in research labs around the world, that is discarded as uninteresting and left out of the scientific canon. With open practices, and tools that make sharing data and materials trivial, we can eliminate a huge amount of redundant work while at the same time getting a more complete picture of what we, as a species, have actually learned.

What drew you here to the Center for Open Science? 

My personal values align very well with the Center's, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to write free and open-source code to help scientists and science in general. The work is interesting, and it is one of the few places I could work without making any ethical compromises.

What is work like at the COS on a daily basis?

My day-to-day generally involves 1-3 cups of coffee, checking on github issues, commenting on SHARE or Elasticsearch related pull requests, checking in with the SHARE team to see how we are doing with our upcoming milestones (beta in three weeks!) and then picking a few issues to resolve for the day. These are important because the SHARE team is currently very small, but the project is getting to be very big. By staying up to date with everyone, and chipping away at open issues and features, I am doing my best to set us up for a clean and relatively easy release.

What is one of your current projects? 

 Currently I'm working on the SHARE Notification Service. It is a project that seeks to gather metadata on all research release events (publications, data releases, preprints, etc) and put in into a normalized form with a search and subscribe interface. 

How do you find Charlottesville? 

I spent most of my life on a farm, so to me Charlottesville seems like a huge and active city. I miss being around animals, and being in such close proximity to other people feels odd, especially at home. I don't miss the farm labor though.

Do you have a favorite place to eat? 

I'm gluten free, and I really appreciate how friendly C-ville is to people like me. The Smoked Barbecue co is a fantastic food stand that is frequently on the downtown mall, and I have eaten there like twice a week for weeks at a time

What are you listening to recently? 

Jordan Gold is one of our QA interns. She works with the QA team to test the OSF and make sure it’s ready to go to production.  Hometown: Leesburg, VA

Educational Background:Univeristy of Virginia, Computer Science Major

What drew you to COS?

I was drawn in by the people and the friendly work environment as well as the message behind the company.

Describe some of your day-to-day duties and responsibilities.

I am a QA intern so I am constantly testing the OSF to catch bugs working closely with devs. My day to day responsibilities change depending on which stage of the release we are at.  It could range from creating test cards to making sure that nothing has changed with the updates (regression testing).

What is the OSF?

OSF stands for Open Science Framework and it is a place where researchers can publish their findings as well work with other contributors on any stage of their research.  This is important to promote open science.

What are you working on right now?

Currently we are working on the .30 release and testing functionality for that. Do you like living in Charlottesville, VA?

I enjoy living in Charlottesville.  It is extremely helpful that everything is within walking distance and its a large enough location where you can find things to do during all hours of the day.

Because this office is addicted to good food, do you have a favorite place to eat in C-ville?

My favorite place to eat in C-ville is Lemongrass.  

What type of music are you currently listening to?

We’ve interviewed another developer intern, Harris Mendell, who has had a hand in projects like the Zotero and Mendeley integration.

Hometown: Upperville, VA

Educational Background:

4th year undergraduate in the Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science program at UVA.

Fun Fact About yourself:

I play in a punk band which has sold thousands of records and played hundreds of shows across the majority of the US and UK.

Can you tell us what Open Science means? Open Science is a movement to make scientific research accessible to all who are curious. It is a counter to the increasing presence of pay-walled articles and content in scientific journals. What drew you to COS? Coming out of college I knew I wanted to work for a company whose primary motivation was not money. Building infrastructure to support the pursuit of better scientific practices was something I could definitively get behind. Additionally, I knew there were a lot of really smart people here who I could learn from, and that has definitely been the case. Describe some of your day-to-day duties and responsibilities. Why are they important? Since January, the majority of my time at COS has been spent building add-ons for the Open Science Framework. Broadening the scope of what the framework is capable of is really important in convincing researchers that the OSF is a platform which is not only morally awesome, but technically awesome, complete with plenty of quality-of-life improvements over their current practices. When I’m not working on one of these add-ons I’m probably fixing bugs, or bettering myself as a software engineer by learning about and practicing a new language or framework that is integral to what we do here. What is the OSF and why is it important?

The OSF is a platform for researchers to engage with all aspects of their research’s life cycle. It facilitates collaboration, connections with existing frameworks via add-ons, and control over the privacy of every individual part of their data. This system is vital in achieving the Center’s pursuit of furthering openness and integrity in scientific research. It allows researchers a separate path from the traditional peer-reviewed life cycle. What are you working on right now?

Just last week the primary add-ons I was involved with, Zotero and Mendeley, went live. That means that currently I’m working on bug fixes for stuff on the production server, and will start a new primary project when I get back from spring break. What type of projects to interns generally get to work on here? It seems like interns get placed on a variety of different projects during their time at the center. As I previously mentioned I was first put on a team developing an add-on for reference manager tools, but my friend Casey is currently working on a better system for rendering PDFs on the framework, and Robert is working on a public wiki system. In terms of developer interns, I believe we are all working on the OSF, but there is a ton of variety in what were doing on the platform. Do you like living in Charlottesville, VA? Charlottesville is a small town, but there is always a lot going on. It’s beautiful, and generally a fun place to work, go to school, and live! Because this office is addicted to good food, do you have a favorite place to eat in C-ville? My favorite restaurant in Charlottesville is hands down Milan, an Indian restaurant out on 29. What type of music are you currently listening to?

To continue highlighting our wonderful interns here at the Center for Open Science, we've interviewed one of our new development interns, Matt Frazier. So let's get to it! 

Name: Matt Frazier Position: Developer Intern Hometown: Culpeper, VA Where did you go to university: I'm a UVA Alumnus Major: Computer Science Do you have any other scientific interests?

Artificial Intelligence, Virtual/Augmented Reality, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Neuroprosthetics, to name a few.

What is one fact about yourself that people might find interesting?  I hiked the Appalachian Trail after graduation.

Wow! That's a long way to walk. Congrats! Anyway...

Can you finish the sentence, "Open Science means": In short: Open Science means freedom, applied to the scientific process. Free access to research, increased collaboration in scientific endeavors, and a system that not only allows but conduces peer review at every step of the scientific method. It entails a paradigm shift from the currently prevailing view; producing novel and sometimes unsubstantiated work to be published is no longer the be-all and end-all of science in a technologically advanced society where information can be practically instantaneously and globally disseminated. Now, would-be scientists must focus on making their work reproducible rather than just ground-breaking (though ground-breaking is still great as long as it can be reproduced). Furthermore, work that confirms the results of previous research is no longer viewed as second-class; it merely goes to strengthen the evidence supporting the original researchers claim. Openness in science allows anyone to learn from and to contribute to the humanity-wide quest for knowledge.

Alright, and what drew you to COS? If you couldn't tell from the above long-winded explanation, I'm really into open practices (initially software, more recently science) and wanted to do some good in the world. I'm also interested in the sociopolitical implications of such practices, but that's a discussion for another interview.

Describe some of your day-to-day duties and responsibilities.

Code maintenance and development of COS projects on GitHub, mostly. 

And, what are you working on right now?

I recently wrapped up OSF integration with the modular-file-renderer, a project that allows a number of different file types (images, spreadsheets, molecular structures, etc.) to be rendered in a web page, so scientists can view and comment on one another's work without having to download every piece of data. I'm currently prototyping what is effectively a forum to help scientists quickly identify the correct domain repositories for their specific type of data. This will be achieved by linking said repositories to their accepted taxonomies (subject, datatype, etc.), journal preferences, associated institutions, and other miscellaneous metadata. This will also allow the identification of repositories with leading practices, and thereby promulgate best practices.

What’s it like living in Charlottesville, VA?

The roads could be a bit more bike-friendly, but otherwise it's a pretty great small city. Quite possibly my favorite place along the East Coast. Lots of good places to eat, and a fairly active social scene. 

Do you have a favorite place to eat in C-ville? I try my best to avoid picking favorites, which in this case is easy because there are so many good places to eat.

What music are you currently listening to?