A Bet Worth Placing: Computing and Data Science at UChicago

In a new op-ed for The Chicago Maroon, DSI Faculty Co-Directors Mike Franklin and Dan Nicolae, and Liew Family Chair of Computer Science Henry Hoffman share why the University of Chicago’s commitment to broad, cross-disciplinary inquiry was a central factor in their decision to pursue research and teaching there: “the life of the mind here isn’t confined to any one discipline. We set out to grow computer science, data science, and AI in dialogue with philosophy, history, literature, law, medicine, the sciences, and the arts.”

In their op-ed, they make the case for why scholarship and teaching at the intersection of the humanities and computing matters fundamentally to the University’s goals, beyond scholarly recognition or growth in enrollment or funding. In a world transforming rapidly through computing, data, and now AI, fluency in computational thinking and data literacy will be increasingly essential to forming individuals who are educated questioners and lifelong learners. “If the University’s duty is to ‘sustain inquiry and training into all things that touch on human existence,’ then equipping students to reason about data, algorithms, and their social meaning follows naturally from that duty.”

As advances in computing unlock advances in fields from medicine to climate science, and as inquiry into writing, communication, and social choice shapes our interactions with AI, investment across humanities and data science “is not a zero-sum choice; it is the holistic view of rigorous inquiry that Chicago has always championed.”

Read more at The Chicago Maroon here.