data science @ uw – Connecting people with data science research, education, and collaboration at UW-Madison

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.

News and Announcements

Wisconsin in the information age
Computing and data permeate every aspect of society, from banking to health care, from retail to communications, from agriculture and manufacturing to education and tourism. We vote, drive, visit the doctor, buy a house and make our phone calls with the assumption that somebody, somewhere is collecting information, feeding it into a database, processing and using it (we hope ethically) to make decisions.
Newly redesigned website serves the UW-Madison data science community
The data science community has a new place to explore research, academics, training and other opportunities at UW-Madison. The American Family Insurance Data Science Institute recently launched a fully updated version of the data science @ uw website that presents fresh content from partners across campus.
American Family supports second round of data science research grants at UW-Madison
The American Family Insurance Data Science Institute is honored to announce the results of the second round of the American Family Funding Initiative, a research competition for data science projects.
UW–Madison to continue fundamental data science research with Phase II award from NSF
The National Science Foundation awarded a five-year, $4.6 million grant to the UW–Madison Institute for the Foundations of Data Science for fundamental research in the rapidly growing field of data science.
Understanding how birds respond to extreme weather can inform conservation efforts
When it comes to climate change, University of Wisconsin–Madison forest and wildlife ecology Professor Ben Zuckerberg says birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
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Campus Events

October
- October 22
  A Data Mesh for the Next Generation of Apps and PlatformsSteve Vranyes, Sr. Distinguished Engineer at Medtronic4:00 PM, Online

More events

Covid-19 Notice

UW-Madison recommends that events and meetings continue to be held virtually.

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Faces of Data Science

“Data science can help make the world a better place when it is used for the greater good, such as to provide insights that can help improve healthcare and fight poverty, racism, and other challenges we face as a society.”

Irene Ong

Assistant professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine and Public Health
Joint appointment in Biostatistics and Medical Informatics
Co-Director, Carbone Cancer Center’s Cancer Informatics Shared Resources
Member, Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine

Irene Ong finds excitement in teasing out findings from data, as it satisfies her curiosity. To her, it’s like solving a mystery, as data science can provide insights for informed decisions. She uses statistical and machine-learning methods to understand how immune systems develop, how to prevent allergic and infectious diseases, and which drugs to recommend for cancer treatment, all with the goal of keeping people healthy. Her work includes examining the development of healthy immune systems in rural farm and non-farm children, including Amish children, to better understand what farm life can teach us about the development of healthy immune systems. She’s also profiling antibodies specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and looking for patterns of COVID-19 responses in rural and urban children.

Irene received an American Family Funding Initiative award to develop a method for learning causal relationships from data. While this method will be applied to discovering the environmental factors that cause or prevent allergic diseases, this work can also be used to incorporate causal learning into other domains.