We designed the rOpenSci Champions Program with a mentorship aspect. Mentoring plays a significant role in the growth and development of both mentors and mentees alike. In our program, each Champion has a mentor who accompanies them during their training and development of their project.

In this series of blog posts, we introduce you to the ten teams of this first cohort and what they will be working on in the program.

Meet Victor Ordu from Nigeria and Laura DeCicco from United States!

Victor Ordu – Champion

Victor Ordu is a medical doctor with many years of experience in the Nigerian healthcare space. Having spent the first ten years of his career in clinical medicine he found a niche in health policy and environmental health regulation when he switched to the public health domain.

Victor has worked in various capacities in both the public and private sectors including as a field consultant for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the WHO EMRO Region. Public health exposed him to the centrality of data management in determining health outcomes. The quest for the right tooling for the job began with EpiInfo and SPSS until he discovered R and instantly fell in love with the language. Since then he has not looked back.

Now an independent consultant for the UN and international NGOs working in Nigeria, R has been the focus of much of his work. He also conducts R training programs for public and private organizations in Nigeria. Victor is an alumnus of the University of Nigeria and has also acquired certifications from the University of Heidelberg (Germany), the World Bank Institute, and Galilee Management Institute (Israel), to mention a few. He is an active member of the R community and has authored R packages, like naijR that have found great use among R enthusiasts worldwide.

Laura DeCicco – Mentor

Laura comes from Madison, WI USA. She works for the United States Geological Survey developing and maintaining several R packages. She is excited to be a mentor for the inaugural cohort of rOpenSci Champions.

We’re excited to have Victor in the Champions program and Laura as his mentor. We can’t wait to see the results of the work of this team. Stay-tuned for the next team introduction.