Informatics in the workplace: Chris Koester
October 17, 2008
It’s a long way from the United States Coast Guard to IUPUI. Just ask Chris Koester, who works as a data specialist for the IU School of Medicine (IUSM), looking for trends in research grant making. An important step on his journey from military to medicine was the IU School of Informatics.
Last May, Koester graduated with a B.S. degree in informatics, and like many IUPUI grads, did so as a so-called non-traditional student. Before earning his degree, Koester, age 29, served in the U.S. Coast Guard, including three years of his enlistment at the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center in southern Indiana.
While at Crane, Koester learned about the IU School of Informatics, sensing that it would be the perfect place for completion of his college career. Interested initially in geographic information systems, Koester found himself drawn to the precise analysis of data that is at the heart of informatics.
“I didn’t set out to prepare for a career in the medical field,” said Koester, a native of Iowa. “But it soon became clear to me that informatics and data analysis were the perfect fit.”
At IUSM, Koester plays an important role, applying various queries against very large data sets looking for relationships between grant proposals and awards. These analyses are then broken down by various IUSM departments and grant types.
“Grants are the second largest source of funding for the School of Medicine, and such relational information is critically important for decision makers here,” explained Koester.
Simply put, Koester is applying the classic definition of informatics in the workplace: parsing through data and turning it into useable information.
Koester and his co-workers have a larger goal in mind for their grant making research – transferring traditional paper-based reports to a Web-based executive dashboard, making critical information more easily available to leaders in the dean's office.
“My advice to informatics students is to always pay attention to detail. Precision work is a must when dealing with important data. Always be on the lookout for ways to use informatics to validate your data. That’s critically important when a single character can break your project or distort the information you are presenting,” said Koester.
