The UCR Library is joining universities across the UC system for UC Love Data Week, a series of virtual workshops and presentations running Feb. 9–13, 2026.

This week-long celebration offers free online sessions designed to build essential data skills for University of California students, faculty, and researchers at all experience levels.

Leading the effort for UCR is Dr. Barbara Martinez Neda, a Research Data Scientist in the Library’s Research Services department who joined the team in summer 2025. This year marks her first time presenting on behalf of UCR. Barbara and the Research Services Team will cover a variety of data-related topics, ranging from exploring strategies for finding public health data and AI-assisted data visualization to hardware-oriented sessions on Raspberry Pi and Arduino. 

Barbara hopes participants will discover the vast potential that working with data offers. “You can process research datasets with a wide variety of tools and methodologies, and the insights you can draw from them are virtually endless,” Barbara said. “Being able to draw conclusions from hard numbers is fascinating because data represents facts and experimental ground truth rather than just an opinion." She encourages the entire UCR community to participate regardless of their background, adding, "We're so excited to share our love for data with the community, so please don't feel intimidated to attend a session even if you don't have much experience with the topic."

All UC Love Data Week events are free and virtual. To explore the full schedule, visit the UC Love Data Week website. 

Beyond UC Love Data Week, Barbara offers year-round support for all your research data needs including depositing in UC’s data research repository, Data Dryad. From data research management planning and organization to processing, analysis, and sharing, Barbara can provide assistance throughout the research data lifecycle. Learn more and schedule a consultation with Barbara on the UCR Library Data Services webpage.