Big Data is coming from complex systems everywhere. It's coming fast and we need people who can make sense of it: data scientists.
UVM's Vermont Complex Systems Center has designed a new Masters in Complex Systems and Data Science (MS in CSDS) to help students become data scientists with eminently transferable skills. The program will train them in computational and theoretical techniques for describing and understanding complex systems, which are often sociotechnical in nature, enabling them to predict, control, manage and create such systems.
The MS in CSDS is a natural expansion of the Center's successful five-course Graduate Certificate in Complex Systems that trains students from all disciplines to tackle data-rich problems. Our Certificate functions as a complement to graduate degrees across campus, or as a stand-alone post-baccalaureate achievement.
As Big Data has become a common thread across disparate disciplines, so too have methods for contending with the many difficulties presented by large-scale data analysis. We now expect students from all fields to obtain mastery in, for example, the programming language Python and visualization toolkits such as D3.
Students will be trained in:
- Industry standard methods of data acquisition, storage, manipulation, and curation;
- Visualization techniques, with a focus on building high-quality web-based applications;
- Finding complex patterns and correlations through, for example, machine learning and data mining;
- Powerful ways of hypothesizing, searching for, and extracting explanatory, mechanistic stories underlying complex systems -- not just how to use black box techniques;
- Combining the formulation of mechanistic models (e.g., toy physics models) with genetic programming.
Our courses are highly innovative in their use of the web for lecture materials, video, and interactive visualizations, and have resulted in many student-led, peer-reviewed journal publications, as well as outstanding positions for students leaving UVM, in both industry and academia.
Our initial offering of the MS in CSDS is Fall of 2015.
Questions?
For more information, please visit uvm.edu/complexsystems or contact Andrea Elledge at (802) 656-8867 or aelledge@uvm.edu