Study Data Science
Data Science is the fastest growing major at UW-Madison, and students across campus are interested in increasing their data literacy. Whether you are interested in a data science career or course, opportunities abound at UW-Madison. Learn more about majors, courses, and professional degrees and certificates
Explore Campus Resources
Data science has applications in all disciplines, and data science @ uw is your connection to data science institutes, centers, and programs across the UW-Madison campus. It’s also the place to find research funding, training, coding meetups, news, events and seminars, student orgs, communities of practice, and other resources.
Collaborate With Us
Data science innovation at UW-Madison furthers the Wisconsin Idea by fueling discovery and economic development. Our research and talent development benefit communities and businesses in all corners of the state, and beyond. We are committed to fostering an inclusive culture in data science. Learn about collaboration opportunities
American Family Insurance Data Science Institute
The Data Science Institute (DSI) is central to UW-Madison’s strategic priority to grow its research enterprise and expand its global impact, supporting the scholarship of faculty, staff, and students.
Data Science Hub
The Data Science Hub in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery collaborates closely with the DSI to provide training and implement data science practices into research across campus.
School of Computer, Data, & Information Sciences
The School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences (CDIS) brings together the top-ranked departments of Computer Sciences, Statistics, and the Information School.
News and Announcements
Ten projects awarded funding through UW research partnership with American Family Insurance
The UW–Madison Data Science Institute (DSI), powered by American Family Insurance, announced ten research projects selected for funding through a unique sponsored research partnership.
Data Science Hub announces 2022 Impact Report
In 2022, the Data Science Hub hosted 12 workshops, trained 8 new Carpentries instructors, and had 315 workshop attendees, 107 drop-in consultations at Coding Meetup, and 286 attendees at the yearly Research Bazaar conference.
Spring 2023 commencement: Celebrating 7 graduates from the School of Computing, Data, and Information Sciences
With graduation celebrations underway this week, seven notable School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences graduates share their next chapters, relive favorite moments, and dispense some words of wisdom on what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown.
Groundbreaking: CDIS building to foster high-tech innovation, collaboration
When it is completed, the building will house CDIS — which includes the Information School and the departments of Computer Sciences and Statistics — the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute, the N+1 Institute and the Center for High Throughput Computing.
Data Science Institute welcomes first cohort of affiliates
The American Family Insurance Data Science Institute (DSI) is honored to announce its inaugural cohort of faculty and academic staff affiliates representing colleges, schools and departments across the UW–Madison campus.
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Campus Events
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Faces of Data Science
“Data science allows us to get knowledge and answers whenever we have data sets that no one human can analyze, either manually or visually, by themselves.”
Claudia Solís-Lemus
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences; Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
While earning her Ph.D. in statistics at UW–Madison, Claudia Solís-Lemus attended a seminar on the use of probability models to understand the evolution of DNA. In her words, it was the coolest thing she’d ever heard, and this seminar profoundly influenced her career.
Claudia collaborates with life sciences researchers, developing mathematical models to help them understand relationships and interactions among species. She has two main research areas. First, she works with biologists to create complex networks, or trees, depicting the evolutionary processes connecting multiple species. Her lab develops open-source software to support this work. Her second research area focuses on how soil microbes affect plants. Specific microbes in the soil are connected to observable characteristics in plants. Claudia uses machine learning to pursue her long-term goals of predicting what kinds of plants might grow and thrive in different soils, and how soil microbiomes might respond to environmental change.
Outreach and service are central to Claudia’s work. She has introduced students to data science through her work on FastStats web apps for Wisconsin Fast Plants, and she created the Latinx in Statistics database with the American Statistical Association to encourage networking and diverse speakers at academic events.
Data science is an emerging field that is roughly defined as the study, development, and application of methods that reveal new insights from data, which include numbers, text, images, graphs, sounds, code, and metadata. This website is an inclusive portal to resources and activities related to data science at UW-Madison.
As data reshapes our world, UW–Madison brings the power of data science to every field of study. The future path of data science will be shaped by insights from all disciplines.