On August 15, nearly 30 Chicago professionals from the business, consulting, entrepreneurial, and government domains attended a luncheon at IIT’s downtown campus to learn about the new Master of Data Science program and how they might partner with IIT.

Attendees included technical and executive-level people from MethodCare, TempoDB, Braintree, DataMade, LLC, IBM, Optum Insight, Open BI, Groupon, State of Illinois, Lab42, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Sagence and Spartz.

The launch of IIT’s data science program comes at a time when data are being acquired faster than ever before and are being used to make decisions on business, health care, science and government policy. The average company with over 1,000 employees has hundreds of terabytes of stored data and many companies are even producing tens of terabytes per day. As the amount of data in the world continues to grow, so does the demand for data scientists who can make sense of these large data sets.

In response to this growing demand, the Master of Data Science program has shaped its curriculum accordingly. Unlike many data analytics and business intelligence degrees, IIT’s program is multidisciplinary.

“Educating data scientists is a multifaceted task,” said Shlomo Argamon, professor of computer science and director of the program. “We will teach our students the theory and practice of statistics, data mining, and scalable computing in depth; train them in communications and design skills; and provide them with practical experience guided by academic and industrial mentors to ensure that they are prepared to act with the highest standards of professionalism.”

For more information, contact Shlomo Argamon at argamon@iit.edu.