Lucy van Oostveen (MoL 2018)

• Data Scientist at the Dutch Environmental and Transport Inspectorate (Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport)

Even though I really liked logic and the MoL, I realised during my second year that I prefered to work outside of academia. To figure out what kind of job I would like to do, I started working part-time besides writing my thesis. Since I have an IT background ( I studied AI before the MoL), I applied for IT-related jobs. I learned that general IT such as building software and functional management was not really what I was looking for and also the commercial consultancy world was not really my thing, at least for now. So when I almost graduated, I started looking for innovative and data/AI related jobs in the public sector.  I looked for positions where I was able to learn a lot and have some freedom finding a position that fits with what I want. I applied for several traineeships in the public sector and the IT-traineeship and got accepted at the IT-traineeship of the central government. 

I think that analytic thinking, being able to approach problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, and collaboration with people with a different background are all very usefull skills that I learned during the MoL and use in my job today!