Elodie Baril, senior technician in the civil service

Elodie Baril is a senior technician in the civil service at INED’s Statistical Methods Service.

(Interview conducted in November 2021)

What path brought you to INED?

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In 2012, as I was completing my Master’s Degree in geography with a specialization in demography, I did an internship at INED, in the Identity and Territory research unit. I’ve been at INED ever since.

I first worked for a year in that same research unit as a project manager, processing survey data. This trained me in programming and textual statistics methods. I then joined the Statistical Methods Service, where it was my hope to assist and train new hires.

What is your role at INED?

As a research technician at INED’s Statistical Methods Service, I help my coworkers with programming and in using both generalist statistical programs such as SAS, R, Stat, and Spad and more specific ones such a Iramuteq for textual analysis, QGIS for spatial analysis, and Magrit for mapping. 

Part of what I do is data analysis, using my skills in multivariate data processing, the type involved many INED research projects. Data have to be reworked, restructured in some cases, and synthesized before research teams can analyze them; only after this has been done can data work to provide answers to research questions. 
I also run training programs for different levels: introductory, programming, processing optimization. 

What would you say is specific about INED? What do you appreciate most about the Institute?

What I appreciate most is the stimulating, enriching diversity of research subjects and data here. You can follow a research project’s development all the way to publication of the research findings. 

Also, statistical service technicians and INED colleagues are always ready to assist each other. This is very helpful, especially when it comes to resolving some of the difficulties that come up.