The University of Washington’s Graduate School has approved the creation of a Ph.D. option in “Advanced Data Science” – an initiative of UW’s $2.8 million National Science Foundation IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research) award in data science, led by UW CSE’s Magda Balazinska.
The goal of the option is not to educate all students in the foundations of data science, but rather to provide advanced education to the students who will push the state-of-the-art in data science methods in their domain – to educate the next generation of thought leaders who will both build and apply new methods of data science.
An important characteristic of this advanced data science option is that, independent of their home department, students will complete the same set of core data science courses. This shared core curriculum will ensure that students are not only knowledgeable in data science but that they also had the opportunity to interact with each other and form interdisciplinary cohorts.To complete the option – which will be noted on their transcripts – students will take three out of the following four courses:
- Data Management: CSE 544
- Machine Learning, CSE 546 or STAT 535
- Data Visualization: CSE 512
- Statistics: STAT 509 or STAT 512-513
Additionally, to further expand students’ education and create a campus-wide community, students will register for at least 4 quarters in the weekly eScience Community Seminar.
Six academic programs are the “launch partners”: Astronomy, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering, Genome Sciences, Oceanography, and Statistics.
Learn more about the Advanced Data Science option from the proposal here.