Welcome to the Department of Data Science in the Ying Wu College of Computing at NJIT.
Dear Students, Parents and Visitors,
Welcome to the new Department of Data Science at the Ying Wu College of Computing! I am happy and honored to serve as the inaugural Chair of this new department.
Many students ask me: So, what is data science anyway? My first answer is always, "Whatever it is, it is red hot." Demand for graduates with data science degrees is exploding. Take a look at glassdoor.com and type in "Data Science." Most of the listings have salary ranges with upper values well over $100,000, some even for entry level data scientists. But what is data science, really? It is best to explain this by looking at where it came from. Computer science was created some 75 years ago by a union between applied mathematics and electrical engineering. Data science is the result of a recent union between applied computing and statistics.
While computer scientists are forever trying to develop new, fast, efficient algorithms that solve problems previously unsolvable (or solved too slowly), data scientists are happy to use existing algorithms, but in new combinations, applied to ever larger real-world data sets. The sudden success of applying artificial intelligence methods to the huge data sets collected by the Googles and Facebooks of the world has led to breakthroughs in data science that were unthinkable even ten years ago. Does your phone recognize your face? This is data science at work. Does a voice on the phone tell you your bank balance? Data science again.
Computer science is thriving, but it is well established. Making revolutionary breakthroughs in computer science is becoming harder and harder. Data science, on the other hand, is "the train leaving the station now." Data science practitioners today are still pioneers, who can take us to worlds that we cannot even imagine.
Come join us. Jump on the train. The future is bright for data scientists.
