American Family Funding Initiative
American Family Insurance has partnered with UW through the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute to support fundamental data science research. The American Family Funding Initiative provides research awards of up to $150,000, with research teams based in departments across the UW-Madison campus.
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 through the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences. 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
“One hopes that the state of Wisconsin continues to understand the value of having a great university to help with its scientific and computational outputs, as I think this can have a great influence on the positioning of Wisconsin as a leading entity in the data science revolution.”
Michael Ferris
Professor, Computer Sciences; Affiliated Professor, Mathematics, Industrial and Systems Engineering; Director, Data Science Hub, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
Michael Ferris enjoys mathematical puzzles, and he uses data science to solve puzzles with real-world applications. Through his research, he aims to produce better decisions and outcomes for a wide range of environmental and societal challenges, from reducing pollution caused by dairy farm manure to increasing renewable energy use and delivering COVID-19 vaccines fairly.
Michael supports decision makers by developing mathematical models to allocate limited resources like vaccine doses and clean energy. In the case of energy planning, for example, models can describe energy supply and demand, and movement from sources to end users. However, these models are complicated by uncertainties about future energy demand and renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro. Data science gives Ferris tools to address the complex interplay between different kinds of data, allowing him to address uncertainty in his models.
In Michael’s view, data science enhances the value of data by providing insights about what is happening in complex, interacting systems, so we can predict future possibilities. Data science is deeply intertwined with uncertainty and increases our understanding of it to produce better outcomes for society.
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.