Participant Testimonial: Adla Abou Steiti
Adla Abou Steiti is a Palestinian born in Syria, and currently residing in Lebanon. She pursued a major in Biology, but after graduating, she discovered a growing interest in computer and data science. Her first experience in the field came through data annotation with Humans in the Loop. Before this, she had taken media literacy courses at university, but Adla always wanted to explore the field further and constantly sought new opportunities.
Adla initially learned about Humans in the Loop through Techfugees, one of HITL’s former partners, and is currently part of HITL’s medical annotation team and has already worked on a trial project.
“It is interesting to see how annotation can be helpful in the medical field, and I am excited to see upcoming projects”
At the beginning of 2024, Adla successfully graduated HITL’s Business Analytics course and was recommended to apply for the Data Dojo Science scholarship. Due to her prior experience with Excel and data analytics, combined with her self-learning efforts, she found the Business Analytics course both easy and engaging. For her, the Data Dojo programme was somewhat similar to the Business Analytics course specifically in the way that the content was presented, including the weekly meetings with a dedicated trainer. She particularly liked that if someone missed a class, all the necessary information was available on their platform, along with additional exercises to practise on.
Adla appreciated the supportive environment in the Data Dojo, where the trainers were responsive and learners were encouraged to ask questions or raise concerns. Although she initially expected to be familiar with much of the course content, she was pleasantly surprised by how much new information there was to absorb, especially regarding data science. Her favorite part of the course was building models, particularly learning how to tune hyperparameters.
“Changing a little bit of the code can make a difference in the accuracy of the outcome. That was the first time I practised this – changing something slightly and making a huge impact”
Looking ahead, she is eager to continue studying topics related to data science, as there is always something new to learn and deeper layers to explore. However, her primary focus is on building her portfolio and gaining hands-on experience through projects. She hopes to find an internship or job in the field to further develop her practical skills.