COSMOS, in this edition of Cosmographer Corner, highlights the work of former University of Arkansas at Little Rock graduate and Cosmographer Dr. Thomas Marcoux. 

Dr. Marcoux—who is now a Senior Data Scientist working for Bayer—started his graduate education at UA Little Rock in 2015, studying for his master’s in computer science. After starting his PhD, he joined COSMOS as a graduate research assistant in 2018. He received his PhD in computer & information sciences in 2022, and worked as a postdoc for COSMOS post-graduation. We interviewed Dr. Marcoux on where his career is now and what his work at COSMOS entailed, with his responses below.

How did COSMOS fit into your university/secondary education career? How did you come across COSMOS, and what were you studying when you joined COSMOS?

Before my time at UA Little Rock, I was an international exchange student, visiting from my home country of France during the senior year of my bachelor’s in computer science at Université d’Orléans. During that time, I discovered that I liked it here in the US, and that I wanted to pursue a master’s here. I returned to France and worked a little bit there, but I decided I wanted to stay in the US long-term. 

When starting my master’s in computer science at UA Little Rock, I was introduced to COSMOS through a friend, Tuja Khaund, who was working at COSMOS at the time as a graduate research assistant. Eventually I met Dr. Agarwal, joined COSMOS, and worked there for the four years of my PhD as a graduate research assistant. I also returned after graduation and worked as a postdoc at COSMOS for a year. 

How would you describe the “research pipeline” that you worked on while at COSMOS? In other words, what was the specific area in which you researched?

The main three projects I worked on were VTracker, a tool for highlighting narratives, and DatabaseSyncTool. At the time I worked at COSMOS, everyone definitely wore a lot of different hats, so I did a bit of database management, supporting the work of different COSMOS teams. But VTracker was my flagship project.

I also helped work on the COVID misinformation tool, which was done in partnership with the Office of the Attorney General for the state of Arkansas. We put this tool up on the website for tracking misinformation when COVID was developing, matching articles for debugging information and trying to shed some light in all the confusion.

Since leaving COSMOS, what roles/positions/jobs have you had? What is your current work?

When I worked at COSMOS as postdoc, I continued what I was working on but also did admin work. For example, I would interview people that were applying to COSMOS, since I had seniority at the time. 

After my postdoc work, I began work as a data scientist for Bayer, which is where I work now, through the contractor ColaBerry. With Bayer, I work with plant DNA sequencing data—specifically, I work with the crop science division. And what I do is I support the lab. You may imagine the people with the white coats and the beakers, who do the biology work—they send to me their computerized DNA sequencing data, which I then process. There’s a very complex workflow to the data, and we assign metrics to them and, essentially, do quality assurance. Say there’s these plates with DNA samples data: do they pass our checks? Do we need new samples?—That sort of thing.

What positions did COSMOS and your classes at UALR best prepare you for?

First of all, it’s been Python all the way—I use Python that I learned in classes in the lab. It’s the programming language most likely to be used for scientific projects.

It’s interesting, because COSMOS is a bit like a startup—like I said earlier, you have to wear a lot of hats, to be able to do very different things while working with people coming in and out from different backgrounds who all have different skill sets, different cultures. So I would say that one of the most beneficial things about the COSMOS experience, that you may not get in other places, is that it makes you work with people very well. It sort of forces you to manage expectations of yourself and others, because there are some things others may be able to do better. So you develop this mindset of, “Okay, this is what I’m able to do, and what I can do tomorrow.” It makes you more efficient and able to manage group workloads.

If you had to describe the most momentous event at COSMOS, what would it be?

Oh, that’s easy. We had—in 2019 right before COVID—the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS). We flew to Washington, DC and had an Airbnb, and I was very lucky since that batch of cosmographers was our first and last conference in person, before everything became virtual after COVID hit. It was really fun, going with the team. We presented at a panel that was two projects in one room, and found some people who were interested in funding us just by hearing about our projects. I loved the city so much that I decided to move to it! So I credit SBP-BRiMS for making me want to pursue the career in Washington, DC I now have.

What advice would you have for current Cosmographers?

I hinted at it a bit earlier, when talking about managing expectations and hats. COSMOS is a unique place, where most of the students are international. It will provide you with lots of amazing learning opportunities. So take advantage of those. I know it can be stressful and emotionally taxing if you’re struggling to perform. So what I’ve found to be very helpful is to find what you’re good at and try to steer yourself in that direction, while communicating with your team and Dr. Agarwal what your strengths are. For example, you can, if you’re struggling with such and such projects, try to reorient and say, “Hey, I’m not able to do that. Can we do it this way, or can I have some kind of assistance?”

Alongside that, communication is key. People will get stressed about asking for help or communicating that they don’t know how to do something, which, again, I think is difficult to admit because it may feel like it will cost you something. But being able to reach out helps significantly.