A day in the life of CiteAb product manager Alicia
Alicia Cooper joined our team this summer as one of our two new data product managers. Today we introduce Alicia and give you an insight into the work she does with us here, and learn about how we can expect her to keep us all supplied with baked goodies over the winter!
Alicia graduated from her biology degree at the University of Bath earlier in the summer. During her studies she did a placement year as a project manager that included product design. She enjoyed this experience so much she was excited to join CiteAb’s product management team.
What might a typical morning at work look like for you?
I’m definitely not a morning person at all, so my days usually start with me snoozing the alarm until as late as physically possible! I only live about a 5-10 minutes away from the office so I walk in every day and aim to arrive between 9 to 9:30am.
I can’t start my day without a coffee, so that’s always my first port of call. I like to catch up on any emails and check my ‘to-do’ lists while I wait for the caffeine to kick in and then I’ll start getting properly focused for the day.
What projects are exciting you at the moment?
One of my major projects at the moment is working on gathering citation data for a top five supplier. We’re working on providing them with information on how their antibodies have been used in research, including the applications, reactants, and dilutions.
As this is quite a large project I am managing a team of developers, data scientists and quality assurance experts. As such, a large part of my morning is spent catching up with all the relevant people to ensure the quality of our data is as high as it can be.
When does hunger strike?
I get hungry bang on 12pm every day so eat my lunch pretty early. If it’s sunny outside I tend to go for a quick walk or get a coffee – its great having offices in the centre of Bath because there are some really nice places to walk and nice cafes to try out.
And your afternoon work, what have you been focused on recently?
My second major project at the moment is the management of our citation widget subscriptions. I like to keep in close contact with existing widget customers and assist them in anything they may need, as well as contact new people to spread the word on how useful the CiteAb widget can be! I assist our customers with setup and installation, as well as resolving any queries they may have. I also work on gathering and reviewing the citation data that acts as the backbone behind the widget. We’re always working on expanding the capabilities of the widget and it’s exciting to see how many potential different uses there could be for it.
How do you like to unwind after a day at CiteAb Towers?
I really enjoy cooking and baking so I’m very excited by the return of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ – though it’s not quite the same without Mary Berry! I’ve also been getting into yoga recently and try to go a couple of times a week. I’ve been doing a form called ‘Ashtanga Yoga’ which is really fun, though it does make me feel like I’ve been hit by a train the next day. Some of my friends and I have also signed up to do a Tough Mudder next year, so I really should start training for that too!
Well that’s all for now! Find out more over the coming weeks about other new members of our team. We’ll be featuring them all here on our blog and giving them the chance to tell you all about themselves.
Katrina and the CiteAb team
