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Chloé Pierret is a Junior Assistant at the CLSA's Statistical Analysis Centre

Hi! So, Chloé, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your path before joining the CLSA team?  

Hello, my name is Chloe Pierret, I’m 20 and I started working for the CLSA’s Statistical Analysis Centre in February 2019. I’m a French Lebanese graduate student who immigrated to Canada for my studies. I studied statistics and computer science at McGill University. I just graduated and will be joining the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicinefor my Master’s in Epidemiology as of October 2019.

Do you have any idea about what kind of job you’d like to do when you finish school?

I would like to work in health data science. Ideally in Europe, however, I’m open to other opportunities. This might sound cliché, but my priority is to wake up every morning knowing I love my job and feeling useful.

What interested you about the CLSA? 

The question of the aging population is a recurring subject in public health. The subject interested me and I was impressed with the ambition of the CLSA. I thought it would be a good way to enter my field of interest.

What do you do at the CLSA as part of your internship/summer job, etc.?

My official title is “Junior Assistant”. It’s an umbrella term that can group almost anything. My tasks mostly include data preparation from the raw data collected in the data collection sites across Canada. The final goal is releasing an accurate and usable database to researchers.

What is the most interesting or surprising thing you’ve learned working at the CLSA? How do you think the CLSA will help you grow as a student or in your future?

What surprised me the most was the counterintuitive nature of some results of the study. For example, 62% of the participants report volunteering in the last 12 months. This statistic made me realize how much I underestimated the involvement of elders in their community. We sometimes get to know the results of research done by the researchers using the CLSA database, through our Facebook page, webinars and the CLSA website. I find it a good way to understand the broad reach of the CLSA.

I think and hope that this first work experience in the field of epidemiological research will open doors for me and that the research conducted with our database will lead to the implementation of policies and actions that will better the lives of older Canadians.

How do you think the findings using CLSA data will be useful to you, or others, in the future?

I’m currently considering using the CLSA database to conduct my own graduate research project, nevertheless I do need to decide on a specific subject. The large scope of the study can make it difficult to narrow it down to only one topic.

What was your dream job when you were a child?

When I was a kid, I wanted to become a mad scientist so that I could create strange objects and potions that would be useful to society. I naively thought I could invent teleportation.

The CLSA is dedicated to establishing an innovative, interdisciplinary training environment for the ongoing engagement of new and emerging researchers, as well as maximizing the use of the CLSA platform as a rich resource of data for the next generation of researchers in health and aging.