Brown debuts Data Science Initiative

JEFF BROCK, director of Brown University's new Data Science Initiative, stands in front of a topological map of attributes found in CT scans of traumatic brain injuries. Data analysis approaches like this could help to better categorize injury types and better tailor treatments for individual patients, according to the university. / COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY/NICK DENTAMARO
JEFF BROCK, director of Brown University's new Data Science Initiative, stands in front of a topological map of attributes found in CT scans of traumatic brain injuries. Data analysis approaches like this could help to better categorize injury types and better tailor treatments for individual patients, according to the university. / COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY/NICK DENTAMARO

PROVIDENCE – Building on the school’s strong mathematical and computational science programs, Brown University has launched the Data Science Initiative, focused on big data, that will lead to new research opportunities and includes a new master’s program.

Citing university research ranging from improving the delivery of health care to evaluating public policy on climate change, Brown University President Christina Paxson said in a news release issued Tuesday about the initiative that the work of Brown professors is already “on the cutting edge of the big data revolution.”

She added: “The Data Science Initiative will build on that tradition and unearth new methods for using big data to solve big problems.”

The new master’s program will be a one-year degree in data science and be served by a partnership of the university’s mathematics, applied mathematics, computer science and biostatistics departments. Together, these departments will make up the main hub of the program with a goal of creating a campus-wide data science community. The university is hoping the addition of big data to its academic offerings will encourage students from various disciplines to become data fluent and integrate its study into their work.

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The master’s program curriculum will include an examination of foundational and computational techniques and, through elective classes, students will have the ability to pursue their own interests in conjunction with big data. A final project will see students apply their learning to real-world issues.

Carsten Binnig, adjunct professor of computer science and director of the master’s program, said diversity is at the core of the program: “Courses will provide a fundamental understanding of the tools of data science that students can apply in a huge variety of careers, whether in business, health care delivery, academic research or something else.”

Students for the initial class of the master’s program have begun to be recruited by the university.

Jeffrey Brock, chair of the mathematics department and director of the initiative, said the program was born out of the desire to explore new connections between big data and other disciplines.

“Brown will engage with the foundational questions of the data revolution, becoming a lighthouse for methodological innovation in data science,” he added. ““You never know when a technique applied to a data problem will be useful in another.”

Students involved in the Data Science Initiative will work with Brown University’s Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America to find new cross-discipline links including in the subjects of data access, privacy, security, equity and justice.
“Brown’s Open Curriculum and collaborative research ethos put us in a unique position to help chart the future of the data-enabled society,” said Richard M. Locke, university provost, of the extensive use of big data in day-to-day life.

In addition, the initiative will expand big data-related offerings to undergraduate students and facilitate the hire of 10 new faculty members and researchers whose focus will be the fundamental methods of data science and their application to various research questions.

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