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The Data Science Institute (DSI) executes the University of Chicago’s bold, innovative vision of Data Science as a new discipline. The DSI seeds research on the interdisciplinary frontiers of this emerging field, forms partnerships with industry, government, and social impact organizations, and supports holistic data science education.

The mission of DSI is to address important scientific and societal questions through coordinated advances in applications, models, algorithms, and platforms. To execute this goal, we:

  • Research: Transcending traditional boundaries by organizing our research into interdisciplinary themes focused on high impact results that can benefit society, with programs including multi-year research initiatives, seed grants for high-risk, high-reward research projects, and the development of a research ecosystem.
  • Outreach: Using data science as a lens to re-envision the University of Chicago’s relationship with the South Side of Chicago and greater Chicagoland, a platform for UChicago to lead, innovate and engage with industry, and a powerful approach for creating meaningful social impact.
  • Education: Expanding upon the conventional view of data science — a combination of statistics, computer science and domain expertise — to build out the foundations of the field, consider its ethical and societal implications, and communicate its discoveries to make the most powerful and positive real-world impact

The Data Science Institute partners with the UChicago Department of Computer Science and the UChicago Department of Statistics, and is co-located with UChicago CS in the John Crerar Library Building. But the scope of DSI stretches beyond these departments, facilitating research partnerships and programming for all UChicago divisions, departments, and schools. DSI is also part of an ambitious, multi-year expansion of computer and data science efforts at the University of Chicago.

DSI builds upon the successes of the Center for Data and Computing (CDAC), the intellectual hub and incubator for data science and artificial intelligence research at the University of Chicago from 2018-2021. All CDAC research projects and programs continue under the Data Science Institute.

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