COVID-19 Research Group
There is an urgent need to develop models that can inform policy makers, as well as the general public, in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. An interdisciplinary coalition hosted by the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute is rapidly curating information.
Training and Consultation
Are you looking for campus data and computing resources to support your research? Interested in starting new collaborations with data scientists and other researchers on campus? Looking for training in data and computing skills? The Data Science Hub's team of expert facilitators provides consultations and training.
Majors and Courses
UW-Madison offers a BA/BS in Data Science in the College of Letters and Science. Additionally, many Master's and Ph.D. programs on campus involve data science. This website is your starting point to explore majors and courses in data science at UW-Madison.
Faces of Data Science
“The creativity that lives in art is similar to the creativity seen when discovering and connecting patterns in data. Data science tools applied for the benefit of humankind, animals, and the environment result in a heartfelt and ethical connection to what we do.”
Dörte Döpfer
Professor, Food Animal Production Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine
Faculty Affiliate: Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, Department of Population Health Sciences, Food Research Institute
Veterinarian and epidemiologist Dörte Döpfer says she is not a “classic vet” who drives a truck and treats a single cow. Instead, she studies infectious and production diseases in animal populations, working with large data sets to identify risk factors for bovine metabolic diseases, and diseases such as lameness-associated bovine digital dermatitis.
Dörte is passionate about optimizing mathematical models for statistical prediction and performance. She applies data science methods to co-optimize prediction models not only for meat and milk production, but also for the longevity and well-being of food animals. Her goal is to arrive at a more sustainable agriculture focused on animal welfare.
Covid-19 opened up a new area of research for Dörte. Working with time series, she estimates and predicts confirmed cases and hospitalizations for both UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Her participation in the Data Science Institute’s Covid-19 Research Group helped her overcome feelings of helplessness during the early months of the pandemic.
Dörte is an artist as well as a data scientist. Her portraits of cows reflect how they can thrive in human care. She sees her paintings as data catalysts where patterns of perception come together, and she believes data science can function in a similarly creative way.
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 provides an inclusive data science portal to guide people to relevant resources and activities 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.