Data Science Career: From Researcher To Data Scientist

Question

I’m currently working as a Research Assistant in Computer Science, specializing in both Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Health Informatics (HI) fields. As part of my role, I collect data from several clinical professionals (clinicians, physicians, and doctors) and analyze it (e.g., t-test, ANOVA and so on). Transforming the analyzed data and organizing it into several datasets, we report and use it by creating scientific papers that will fundament our analysis.

Recently, I started to have an interest in the Data Science field, and I’m considering to develop in that direction and become a Data Scientist. As I mentioned, I’m already applying statistical analysis as part of my job. That rises few questions:

1. How do the HCI and Data Science areas relate to each other?
2. How can I shift from being a Research Assistant in the HCI field into Data Science career?
3. What kind of studying/courses should I take?