about

Welcome to my open research site!

My name is Gemma Danks and I have a background in artificial intelligence and genomics. This is the place where I organise, document and share my open research projects, how I work on them and what I learn in the process. It combines an open science lab book with a knowledge base of tutorials, tips and advice that I hope will be useful to others.

Learn more

technology

Exoplanet technosignatures

The discovery of a technologically advanced civilisation elsewhere in the universe would be monumental and the repercussions would extend millenia into the future as humanity (or its biological or technological descendants) embarks on interstellar travel. I have chosen this topic as my next research focus and I will be documenting my journey towards making a contribution to the field.

Learn more

research process

How to choose a research topic

The main value of research comes from sharing it with others. I also want to share the process so I am documenting every step in the research cycle - starting with how I decide what to work on.

Learn more

Recent Posts

My software development process

8 minute read

I am a big fan of process mapping. I used it a lot in my role as a consultant in machine learning and have previously written about mapping out my research p...

How to migrate from Poetry to uv

3 minute read

I have recently been working on a template for new Python projects and of the first decisions I had to make was which tool to use for packaging and dependenc...

My opinionated template for new Python projects

3 minute read

Over the years, I’ve experimented with different tools and learnt about various best practices in software engineering. These things are always in flux and s...

Project Oasis: Part I

9 minute read

Project Oasis was the second SETI-related Summer Faculty Fellowship Study in Engineering System Design funded by NASA in cooperation with the American Societ...