Dr Rachel Mason
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Rachel has had a varied career both within and outside of academia. She has worked for the NHS, British Cycling and private technology companies in roles related to sports performance and biomechanics. She then returned to academia to study for a PhD, completing in 2023, after which she held research assistant/senior research associate roles at both Liverpool John Moore and Lancaster University. After 3 years she moved back out of academia and her most recent appointment is as a Data Scientist at the UK Civil Service.
On contrasting her current role with research roles she reflected that in research you are everything - project manager, researcher, analyst etc- constantly spinning plates. Her current role at the civil service is more focused as you are part of a bigger team with specialisms within making the workload feel more manageable.
There are things she misses about working in academia – that ‘passion project’ and the freedom. On the more positive side she values her current work-life balance which was one of the reasons she decided to leave academia.
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