Concept Paper to Establish an Interdisciplinary Masters in Data Science:
Departments of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics
Rationale: The establishment of an advanced degree in data science will address the growing need for expertise in this field in North Carolina and beyond. The Masters in Data Science offered by the Departments of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics would advance key strategic goals of both NC State and the larger UNC system directives. It would build on existing collaboration between the three departments and several centers and labs across campus, and partnerships with the National Security Agency (NSA) and other UNC campuses.
The establishment of this Masters Program would address the following objectives:
· Provide the University of North Carolina with a Masters in Data Science that emphasizes collaboration among the field’s key disciplines, as advocated by the American Statistical Association[1];
· Fulfill NC State’s strategic focus areas in “health & well-being, ”energy & environment,” and “educational innovation” by building upon strengths in “advanced computing” platform technologies;
· Support Goal 3 (“enhance interdisciplinary scholarship to address the grand challenges of society”) and Goal 5 (“enhance local and global engagement through focused strategic partnerships”) of NCSU’s Strategic Plan;
· Further NC State’s Data Science Initiative;
· Advance the broader UNC system directives (Goal 3: “serving the people of NC”) and (Goal 4: “maximizing efficiencies”);
· Build broad interdisciplinary graduate education, leveraging current programs, faculty, and curriculum across the NC State campus;
· Address a pressing need for deeper, applied mastery in extracting knowledge from Big Data that is at the core of critical intelligence in government, industry, and science;
· Contribute to economic growth in the Triangle area and the State of North Carolina.
Degree Description:
The interdisciplinary Masters program in Data science will train the next generation of professionals for careers in industry, government, and academia. The program will provide students with advanced skills in the components, methods and tools of data science and their application to a variety of tasks related to knowledge discovery and computational and statistical data analysis.
Instructional and Administrative Sustainability:
The Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics departments have more than 40 faculty combined covering the three key disciplines of data science according to the ASA, namely, database management, statistics and machine learning, and distributed and parallel systems. They also constitute the three building blocks of the Data-Driven Cluster at NCSU. The Masters program will build on the existing interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Data Science Foundations.
[1] ASA Statement on the Role of Statistics in Data Science, October 1, 2015. Available Online: http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2015/10/01/asa-statement-on-the-role-of-statistics-in-data-science/