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June 13, 2016

UMass Gets More Corporate Funding for Data Science

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Corporate backing continues to pour into efforts to build up data science and cyber security skills.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which last year launched its Center for Data Science, will receive another $15 million over the next decade from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s foundation. The insurer’s foundation said its goal is to help the university based in western Massachusetts become a global center for data science research and finding new ways to protect digital data.

“The implementation of new technologies across all industries is occurring at an extremely rapid pace, driving demand for scientists skilled in analyzing data and protecting digital information,” Nick Fyntrilakis, president of the MassMutual Foundation, noted in a statement.

The grant includes $12 million to support the Center for Data Science. The funds would be used there to hire additional faculty while doubling the number of data science courses and tripling the size of the university’s master’s program in computer science.

The remaining $3 million is earmarked for new research and education efforts at the university’s Cybersecurity Institute. The funds would be used to establish a cyber security certification program run by the University of Massachusetts at Springfield. Both programs are affiliated with UMass-Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Science. Faculty there would develop and teach the cyber security courses.

“Both data science and cyber security are vital and expanding fields with a tremendous demand for talent,” University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan noted in a statement.

UMass-Amherst is the commonwealth’s flagship university.

Last year, MassMutual announced a $2 million, four-year investment to boost the data science programs at two other Massachusetts schools, Smith College and Mount Holyoke College.

The grant builds on an initiative launched last year at UMass-Amherst to establish a Center for Data Science that will begin offering master’s degrees this year. The school said it has raised $100 million to hire 40 new faculty members over the next decade, doubling its current faculty.

Along with funding from the National Science Foundation, companies like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are contributing to the initiative along with government contractors like Booz Allen (NYSE: BAH) and media companies such as Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI).

A dearth of qualified data scientists has prompted tech companies like IBM (NYSE: IBM) and along with analytics adopters such as MassMutual to begin investing in graduate programs. Those investments are designed to train a new cadre of data scientists needed to fill vacant positions in the booming data analytics field.

IBM’s Watson Group is partnering on data analytics training with Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Ohio State, Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, University of California, University of Michigan and the University of Texas.

Recent items:

Grad Schools Move to Fill Data Skills Gap

IBM Joins With Universities to Push Data Analytics

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