Spotlight: Analia Marzoratti

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Analia Marzoratti. Analia is a PhD student in the Applied Developmental Science program in the School of Education at UVA. She works with Dr. Tanya Evans, studying the cognitive and neural systems most affected by facing adverse environmental conditions (like those linked to poverty) in early childhood. Her long term goal is to use this research to help make changes in early childhood education practices that can make schooling more equitable long-term for children from all backgrounds.

How do you work with technology today?
For my research I analyze neuroimaging data (EEG, and fMRI). This involves not just physically working with technological equipment, but also using computers and statistical software to process and analyze the data I collect with it. I write and adapt lots of code, and read a lot of papers about how other people have tackled research questions similar to mine.

What drives your interest in technology?
Technology and knowledge go hand-in-hand. New knowledge helps us create technologies, and new technologies are what help us create knowledge. As a part of the really new field of educational neuroscience, it’s hard not to notice that a lot of the research questions being asked today would not have been thought of even 5 years ago, because there was no way to evaluate them and scientists just didn’t know what they didn’t know. I’m interested in staying up-to-date with and even contributing to creating the newest technologies, because that’s where I know I can find the most innovative research questions that can lead to significant changes.

What do you remember about your first coding experience?
I decided to learn how to code early on while working on my Bachelor’s degree because I realized how much I needed it in my work as a research assistant, where I was helping process EEG data. My first solo-coding project was writing a script to produce a set of plots in MatLab for multiple datasets. I remember a lot of yelling at my computer, angrily hitting the run button, and late night video-calling an engineer friend. However, while it was painful at first, I found coding was one of the most valuable skills I could have gotten, and each new coding language has gotten infinitely easier!

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology?
For way too long now white, male voices have dominated all the platforms we use to create and disseminate knowledge, which is a great way of stifling other voices and stepping on potential innovation. This has also kept the interests of the many people out there from being equally represented in the decisions being made using what knowledge we do manage to gather. If more girls and women get into technology, we can add our unique perspectives to the process of creating new knowledge from the very beginning of the process. We can promote changes based on our own needs and take research to places it might not go otherwise, paving the way for even more women and girls like ourselves to become a part of research.

What most excites you about the future of technology?
I’m excited for all the ways that technology can help make things more accessible for people, make it so that there are fewer barriers to entry for people in any field based on their background. I’m also looking forward to witnessing the moments of new discovery that we can’t even begin to imagine from the point we’re at in history.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
I would absolutely tell my younger self to bite the bullet and LEARN HOW TO CODE. Like any other language, the earlier you learn it, the easier it is to pick up one coding language, and then to build on that momentum and keep learning more. Coding is everywhere and is only spreading more across every part of life and every field. I think by studying coding earlier, I also would have learned to enjoy it sooner.