My stay here was too short…

… said Kamil Baranski, who completed a one-month internship at The International Clinical Research Center of St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno (FNUSA-ICRC). Specifically, he worked in the Biostatistics team and came to us from the Silesian Medical University in Katowice. We asked his impressions of the visit in a short interview.

You’ve been here for a month of internship, what exactly did you do?

To be honest, it is hard to believe for me that I have been here for a one month. Time goes by so quickly. I spent one month at the Biostatistics Core Facility, where head and chair is Mgr. Bc. Silvie Belaskova PhD. During my stay, I had an opportunity to increase my statistical skills. I attended the lectures about statistics. One of them were presented by Christopher Gotwalt, a JMP SAS director. His presentation about mixed models was amazing. Additionally, since I work with data, either with sensitive personal data, I had an opportunity to attend GDPR training. At FNUSA-ICRC I worked with data related to the cardiology patients with standard therapy and without standard therapy, I screened for side effects of the therapy. However, the main aim of the internship was to increase my statistical skill and I have the feeling that I reached the aim. The most important thing of my stay is that I could consult all my statistical doubts with Silvie. From the profession point of view, she is a very good statistician and from the personal point of view she is a very nice and friendly person. I have a bit ambivalent feeling about my stay at FNUSA-ICRC. I am happy that I could spend time with interesting hard working people here, and at the same time I am unhappy that my stay was too short, at least in my opinion.

You were in Brno for the first time? How did you like it?

Yes, it was my first time in Brno. I have done some sightseeing among the others I can mention Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on Petrov hill, Špilberk Castle, Church of St. James I even visited Mestska Policie because I had to pay a ticket (laugh). But the visit there was comfortable and i had no problems to speak in English. I tried to avoid using Czech/Polish language because it creates some misunderstandings. Moreover I am not type of person who likes to walk through museums, churches, castles etc. The more important thing for me is the interaction with people. To know their habits, their culture and how they differ in comparison to Polish culture. I hope I won’t offend Czech nation but I think Polish culture is similar to yours. You are very friendly and helpful people. I have to mention, additionally, that I am not a big fan of beer, but actually you have a really good beer here, with many types of local beers to choose.

What about FNUSA-ICRC, did you like it?

I don’t think so that I have a privilege to share opinion about whole FNUSA-ICRC but I can do that about Department of Biostatistics. I know that you do here a lot of interesting projects, I would like to participate in most of them. You have a good tools, work conditions and hardworking people to reach the top of the science. I enjoyed my stay and I would like to stay here longer. Moreover, I would like to share special thanks to all colleagues from Department of Biostatistics, especially Silvie Belaskova, Jaroslav Chovan, Jan Vorisek, Bohdan Tyshchenko and Martina Petrikova, she helped me a lot and I could bother her at any time.

Will this internship help you in the future, has it taught you something new?

This internship helped me in two categories. Firstly, I could develop my statistical skills like propensity analysis, mixed models, survival analysis. Secondly, I believe that my internship let me continue collaboration with FNUSA-ICRC.

And what are your future career plans?

That’s the difficult question because it is dependent from many confounding factors. However, I would like to continue my work at Medical University of Silesia in Katowice as a postdoctoral researcher and academic teacher. I am focused on three areas of research: phenotyping of childhood asthma, vaccine hesitancy and liver diseases. But I also realized that SAS programming is becoming my passion so I would like to develop my skills in this filed. For sure I will help people with data analysis. Unfortunately, like most of us, I have a disease called „lack of time“, so it is difficult to focus more at SAS programming. Moreover, I would like to stay in touch with FNUSA-ICRC and keep collaborating with you.