Anthony P. Monaco Photo: Alonso Nichols

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

Our Data Science Imperative

We live in a world dominated by data, ninety percent of which was generated in just the last two years. To harness the potential of this growing avalanche of information, the White House has appointed the government’s first chief data scientist and promised to make public huge datasets across a range of disciplines. The ability to leverage data will drive innovation in every sector of society—and most assuredly in higher education.

For my own research into the genetic underpinnings of childhood neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and dyslexia, large-scale data science and analytics in genomics proved to be powerful tools. By examining datasets across thousands of patients—work that required researchers with expertise in data analysis far beyond what a bench scientist might have—my laboratory was able to advance our understanding of these disorders in ways that simply would not have been possible using traditional molecular biology methods.

Here at Tufts we are poised to play a major role in data-intensive domains. Our unique constellation of schools positions us to make advances in a number of areas—diagnosing and treating human and animal disease, understanding our past and contemporary society through the new insights that digital technologies bring to the humanities, and forecasting threats to public health, to name a few.

Tufts already has a strong foundation on which to build even greater capacity and expertise in the field of applied data science—the broad umbrella that encompasses the acquisition, manipulation, visualization, and analysis of large datasets.

We have an excellent computer science department that offers some of the most sought-after courses on campus. The number of computer science majors has grown 350 percent in just three years, an indication that students understand the importance of acquiring the computational-thinking skills needed to navigate the twenty-first century. The new Raymond and Beverly Sackler Convergence Laboratory at the School of Medicine has brought together biomedical scientists, biostatisticians, chemists, and biomedical engineers to analyze massive amounts of data, not only to develop better treatments for breast cancer but to try and prevent the disease. At the School of Dental Medicine, researchers are mining electronic patient records to develop treatment protocols for those with special needs. The Fletcher School is exploring new areas of policy research, including cybersecurity, which are dependent on applied data science. In the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, work is ongoing in a range of disciplines, including image analysis in mathematics and engineering and the Perseus Digital Library Project in classics. Several university core facilities, such as the one that provides next-generation DNA sequencing, support these and other initiatives that are reliant on big data.

Nevertheless, I believe that Tufts—and indeed all of higher education—are falling short in preparing students and supporting faculty in using computational thinking to examine and interpret the world in ways that will address some of society’s most pressing problems. It is imperative that Tufts invest in providing data science education and research opportunities for our students and that we hire additional faculty to teach students and support other faculty whose research would benefit from computational approaches. An institutional commitment to data science will allow Tufts to remain competitive.

To that end, a university-wide faculty working group spent the past year examining ways to facilitate interdisciplinary, data-intensive scholarship. Chaired by Professor of Mathematics Bruce Boghosian, the group has recommended the creation of a Center for Data-Empowered Research to foster education, training, and research in statistics, computational science, and data science.

The new center would achieve one of the principal goals of our T10 Strategic Plan—creating innovative approaches for solving local and global challenges. The cost of not investing in data science is significant, and so it will feature prominently in our upcoming capital campaign. Now is the time to think big, but that comes naturally to Tufts Jumbos!

—ANTHONY P. MONACO
PRESIDENT, TUFTS UNIVERSITY