Ann Oberg

I loved math in high school. I enjoyed biology too, but those classes seemed like a lot of memorization to me. With math, if I forgot something, I could start with what I knew and work to figure out where I needed to be. So, I headed off to college to learn all I could about math. When I graduated, I was going to be an expert!

By the time I was done, I had a math major and a statistics minor. I didn’t know what to do with my degree, but I vowed I would never take another statistics course in my life—I had had enough of squaring and summing numbers. I saw a flyer about volunteering to teach in underdeveloped countries. That sounded fun, and I could help people in need, so back to school I went to get a teaching endorsement.

You never know the impact seemingly small events will have on your life. I saw a flier for a seminar about this thing called biometry. I was intrigued, so made the time between waiting tables and attending classes to go. Linda Young, at the time from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL), gave the seminar and talked about a job in which you could help people solve problems. You could actually meet with researchers and go out to the farmers’ fields so you would really understand the challenges of a particular experiment. She caught my attention! Her job sounded like so much fun. Even though it involved statistics, I decided to abandon education classes and try it. After all, they used computers so it might not be so bad.

My time in the biometry department at UNL changed my outlook on statistics. I was most intrigued by the variety of problems to which statistics can be applied. Highlights during my time there included summer internships to learn more about life on the job as a statistician. One summer, I worked in the UNL entomology department planting various corn varieties, counting chinch bugs on corn, and measuring dimensions of soybean plants. What I learned most that summer was that data collection can be a challenge—chinch bugs were scarce that year, I got sick from heat exhaustion, and soybean canopy is an absolute haven for mosquitoes.

My second internship was with General Motors. I found this position through the Amstat News internship postings. My role there was to characterize the personality of cars and understand why some nameplates have more crashes than others do. Again, I learned the importance of data collection and understanding the variables I was working with. This was vital to accurately characterize the personality of a car.

I still didn’t think I knew enough when I finished my master’s degree, so I headed off to North Carolina State University (NCSU) for a PhD. I received excellent training and mentoring during my time there, just as I had at UNL. Again, I sought out positions teaching, performing statistical research, and working “in the field” through internships at SAS and the VA hospital. Through these positions, I learned the importance of communication, objectivity, attention to detail, and thoroughness. I also discovered that my favorite aspect of being a statistician was learning more about science through my collaborations—it was almost like not having to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up!

Anyone performing research needed a statistician to help think about hypotheses, data collection, analyses, and data interpretation. So, I could seek out people performing research in areas I found interesting and learn about exciting new areas of research while helping their research be of top quality.

During my job search as I was finishing my PhD in statistics, one of my interviews was with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Truthfully, I had no intention of taking the job since my husband couldn’t transfer there, but I’d heard about Mayo all my life and wanted to see what it was all about. Once I visited, Mayo had my attention! I was so excited by the mission and the work performed there. It was obvious Mayo researchers were among the best in the world, and the passion and excitement they had for their work was contagious. Long story short … off we went to Minnesota.

There are several things I love about working at the Mayo Clinic. There is a wide variety of research studies, ranging from basic science experiments using cell lines or animals to observational studies and randomized trials. Projects involve everything from defining hypotheses and grant writing to database design and data cleaning to analysis and statistical methods development. The statistical unit is among the largest in the country, which allows us to focus on a specific disease and/or analytical area. We work in teams, and the atmosphere is collegial—there is always someone with whom to hash through a tough problem.

My work has changed focus over the past 11 years. When I started, I focused on endocrinology. Over time, I began working with gene expression microarrays, understanding the data and helping researchers intelligently digest the data explosion to guide their research programs. Later, my focus turned to shotgun mass spectrometry proteomics and methods to catalogue and measure protein expression. Lately, my focus has been on understanding expression data from next-generation sequencing platforms and modeling methods in systems biology studies. When working on the cutting edge, there are always new things to learn and figure out. I am almost guaranteed that my focus will be different five years from now. That makes it fun to look forward to tomorrow!

I’ve found that communication is a vital key to success. A course in medical terminology helped me get started in understanding the language of my medical collaborators, and asking them question after question and reading related publications helps me understand more about the science every day. As a statistician, successful application of statistical tools hinges on a deep and thorough understanding of the biological question, potential biases, and how to best measure the desired endpoint.

I finally appreciate that there will always be more to learn. There is no degree that teaches you everything. On the contrary, a degree equips you with a toolbox. While I’m not out in the fields like I envisioned after Young’s seminar, my training in statistics has enabled me to have a fulfilling career through which I can help others and learn more every day. And, although I’m not teaching in underdeveloped countries, I am helping others by guiding research design and analysis and working on studies prioritized based on the needs of Mayo Clinic patients.