By Jessica Sparacino, news correspondent 

With a rising demand for data analysts, Northeastern University has  launched a new suite of graduate programs to prepare students to enter  the growing field.

The programs are interdisciplinary and draw from several departments,  comprised of elements from the College of Computer and Information  Science, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and the D’Amore-  McKim School of Business.

“Clearly there are a huge number of opportunities for applied and experiential learning here,” said Nicholas Beauchamp, a professor of political science. “In fact, many of our students already have jobs in data analysis of one form or another, and want to take their skills up a notch.”

The purpose of the program is to teach students a skill set useful in modern data analytic methods according to Beauchamp, who has been designing curriculum for the program for over a year.

These methods include the manipulation, analysis, visualization and presentation of data, skills that “are in increasing demand both in business and academia,” Beauchamp said.

“Researchers are saying ‘that’s a real interesting way to observe the dynamics of the city directly,’”  Dan O’Brien, a professor in Northeastern’s urban informatics program, said. “The resource itself is so valuable and so rich, but the problem is that there’s no skill set for it.”

Students enrolled in the Data Science Graduate Certificate can now pursue a Graduate Certificate in Data Science, a Graduate Certificate in urban informatics, a Master of Science (MS) in business analytics or an MS in urban informatics.

“The goal is to have [Master of Arts] programs in a variety of fields, such as health, business or urban informatics,” Beauchamp said.

Courses for the programs are online for the Data Science and Business Analytics programs. The Urban Informatics program is offered as a blend of online instruction and courses on campus.

By 2018 the demand for employees with expertise in big data could surpass the predicted supply by at least 50 percent. McKinsey Global Institute reported in 2011 that over 190,000 specialists will be needed in the near future. This increase is largely due to a variety of sectors realizing the value of information and data sets, according to O’Brien.

“I think one reason why this makes a lot of sense is the program really focuses on working professionals who either wanted to shift careers or are already in some form of data analytics career and just want more grounded expertise and knowledge in that field,” Christoph Riedl, an assistant professor of information science, said.

These courses teach a fundamental knowledge of R, a programming language, as well as visualization techniques and other types of data mining and statistical techniques.

“Visualization techniques and other sorts of data mining and higher order kinds of statistical techniques for working with data [is] essentially the data science curriculum,” O’Brien said.

Photo by Scotty Schenck