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Concentration in Data Science

The concentration in data science prepares you for careers in data science and data analytics.

Ready For Anything

Data collection is everywhere, which makes data science valuable for virtually any career path. For example, businesses need people to analyze sales and promotion results while social scientists study the latest Twitter trends. Beyond this, data science solves problems in health care, education and engineering. The concentration, available for both computer science and computer information systems majors, shows you how to solve these problems and find new insights in large sets of information. Courses explain how big data, artificial intelligence, data mining and machine learning algorithms are key tools in this process.

By the time you graduate, your experiences include:

  • Research and projects in small classes and groups
  • Internship opportunities at organizations such as Walgreens, Caterpillar, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, ProducePro and Illinois Mutual Insurance
  • A yearlong senior project with a local business client
  • Networking, career development and programming contests through the Association for Computing Machinery student chapter

Making Your Mark

According to a recent technology forecast by IBM, the number of data science professionals needed by U.S. industries will increase by 364,000 by the year 2020. Graduates will find careers in data and business analytics, working for large manufacturers, consulting firms and the financial industry.

Concentration Requirements

Required Courses - 12 hrs.

  • CS 360 Fundamentals of Data Science- 3 hrs.
  • CS 463 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining - 3 hrs.

Elective courses (choose two) - 6 hrs.

  • CS 461 Artificial Intelligence – 3 hrs.
  • CS 462 Machine Learning – 3 hrs.
  • CS 472 Distributed Databases and Big Data - 3 hrs.