NYU Center for Data Science’s Ph.D. program begins with inaugural cohort of 4 students
September 5, 2017
New York, NY — The inaugural cohort of Ph.D. students at the NYU Center for Data Science (CDS) begin classes today.
The Center’s Ph.D. program in Data Science is the first of its kind in the country.
“A key aspect of the program is its interdisciplinary foundation,” explained CDS director Richard Bonneau. “We have a topically diverse and research-active faculty who are experts in business analytics, computational biology, data visualization, reproducibility, political science, high energy physics, to name a few.”
“Mentored by our faculty, the students will be engaged in a lot of cross-disciplinary research. The program will help them develop a core set of data science skills, and then apply them to their preferred application domains.”
Managed by CDS Director of Graduate Studies for the Ph.D., Vasant Dhar, the 72-credit hour program is designed to be completed in five years, and all students are guaranteed financial support for that duration.
It includes a research practicum where students rotate amongst the faculty, and are exposed to the diverse faculty interests from the start. They also have the opportunity to take courses across all the schools at NYU.
“NYU has a great deal of talent and thought leadership in Data Science across the various schools,” said Dhar. “The new Ph.D. program in Data Science gives students an unprecedented opportunity in learning how to conduct inquiry in this new and exciting field which is transforming society in profound ways, wringing efficiency in every aspect of our lives and enabling new and exciting capabilities that would have been considered science fiction until recently.”
The program attracted 283 applicants this year, and the acceptance rate was 3.5%. Of the ten offers made, five accepted. “We expect to increase the size of our incoming Ph.D. class next year by a factor of two to three,” said Bonneau.
The Ph.D. program is accompanied by a successful and selective Master’s program in Data Science, which has been in place since 2013.
Both programs have several courses in common. Like the Ph.D. program, the Master’s program is also highly interdisciplinary. Master’s students eventually choose one of six topic ‘tracks’ during their studies — data science, big data, mathematics and data, natural language processing (NLP), physics, or biology.
“Although our students and faculty work in diverse topic areas, said Bonneau, “our shared skillset in data science is a common thread that weaves us together at the Center. It’s going to be an exciting year ahead for data science at NYU.”
Learn more about how to apply here.
Learn more about our faculty here.
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About NYU’s Center for Data Science
The Center for Data Science (CDS) is the focal point for NYU’s university-wide initiative in data science and statistics. Established in 2013 by Yann LeCun (who is now the director of artificial intelligence research at Facebook), CDS is a leading data science training and research facility that collaborates with other schools within NYU, and offers both an M.S. in Data Science and Ph.D. in Data Science. More information can be found at cds.nyu.edu and @NYUDataScience.
