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.
Faces of Data Science
“I love to meet people in biology, hear their stories, help them plot their data, and then see a big smile on their face when they discover something they didn’t see before.”
Cécile Ané
Professor, Department of Statistics and Department of Botany; Member, Institute for Foundations of Data Science
Cécile Ané earned her Ph.D. in mathematics, but she shifted her focus to statistics and evolutionary biology because she wanted to answer questions the world is asking, such as how species will adapt and survive climate change. At UW-Madison, she works with biologists across campus, helping them work with vast amounts of data and fill in gaps in understanding. These collaborations, in turn, inform her fundamental research in statistics.
Evolutionary biologists face the challenge of having both too much and not enough data. They have incomplete data from existing species and no data from extinct species. However, the data sets they do have can include thousands of individuals and millions of genes. Cécile helps biologists filter their data to focus on their research questions. She uses mathematical modeling to address the uncertainty of conclusions we can draw about the past, using data collected on organisms living today. She develops research software in Julia, which combines the speed of compiled languages with the interactivity of Python and R.
Cécile sees potential to transform data into meaning in all disciplines. By growing and strengthening the data science community on campus, she hopes everyone will be more aware of how data science methods can further their work.
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.