Opening doors through data

UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, researchers, and administrators have been working together for over a decade to establish a school dedicated to data science. On Jan. 26, the Renaissance Computing Institute at Carolina (RENCI) hosted the first iteration of Carolina Data Science Now, a monthly seminar series that aims to illuminate the interdisciplinary nature of data science and foster a community of faculty and staff who want to connect with other data science researchers and practitioners outside of their fields.

Jay Aikat, the chief operating officer at RENCI and a research professor in the computer science department, spoke about the school’s origins and why data science is so vital in today’s world.

“Working with data, collecting data, analyzing data, telling the story through data — that’s not new,” said Aikat. “So many of us have been doing this for a long time. There are lots of people on campus doing similar things, working with data. That is precisely why we need to have a school.”

Read the full interview with Jay Aikat and learn more about the new School of Data Science…

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