Spotlight on Data Science for Cultural Heritage MSc graduate Irene Iriarte

Before starting the MSc, Irene studied Chemistry at Imperial College London and then completed a PhD in Computational Chemistry before moving to a commercial role in Data Science. She has always been interested in the intersection between science and arts, which is why she decided to do the Data Science for Cultural Heritage MSc part-time.

Since graduating she has secured funding to further develop the project that she worked on during her MSc dissertation.

“It has been great to see the small project become something bigger and more impactful and it has given me the opportunity to network with a lot of heritage professionals.”

Irene believes that the MSc has given her a number of skills to take forward into her future professional roles:

“Despite already working as a Data Scientist, the MSc was such a great opportunity to more formally learn about the theory and statistics behind some of the algorithms I was using.”

One of the highlights of the course for her was the opportunity to be creative and to learn new techniques:

“What I personally most enjoyed was learning about heritage and the great mix of modules, which really allowed me to be creative. I also got to work on some techniques that I'd never used before, such as when I built a graffiti image classifier which was one of my favourite projects.”

Irene’s advice for future graduates would be:

“Really embrace the uniqueness of the MSc - its interdisciplinary nature allows you to tailor it to whatever skills you are most interested in developing. I would also encourage them to use it as a chance to build a network both with the students and lecturers!”

We’d like to thank Irene for sharing her experience of studying Data Science for Cultural Heritage MSc and wish her well in her future career.