MSc in Data Science

Prepare for the data-driven decision-making requirements of any industry at a leading US public institution with Michigan State University's 4-semester M.S. degree in Data Science. This new cross-cutting professional degree program shared by the College of Engineering and the College of Natural Science prepares students in fundamentals and applied topics, taught by leading faculty in data science, statistics, computer science, and computational mathematics. You can be part of the inaugural cohort with Fall 2023 admissions.

The MS program in Data Science is recruiting students with strong undergraduate backgrounds in one of the core areas of statistics, computational mathematics, computer science, and information science, or closely related technical fields, and gives them advanced interdisciplinary training across the disciplines of statistics, mathematics, computer and computational sciences, at levels appropriate for MS students in these respective disciplines. The program is spread over two academic years of instruction; as such, any dedicated two-year MS degree in any one of these disciplines would delve into further depth in that direction than the two-year MS degree in Data Science.

Typical students come in with adequate programming competencies. These can include practical experience with languages from the mathematical sciences, such as MATLAB or R, or classical object-oriented programming.

Who we look for:

• You have a four-year technical degree and you need to learn more about data analysis methodologies to further your professional career.
• You enjoy the mathematical sciences and you can program, especially when you can see how the practical side can make a difference in real-life problems.
• You want to become proficient at explaining data science methods to your non-technical colleagues, and help formulate data-driven team-based decisions.
• You see yourself as potentially capable of inventing new, principled data-science methods which are adapted to the needs of your professional environment.

The MS degree in Data Science is a 30-credit graduate degree, comprised of 18 required credits, 9 elective credits, and a 3-credit capstone course. Please visit the MSU Registrar course search page for MSU catalog course descriptions.

Six required courses (18 credits) for this program are balanced between the three units:

• STT 810, a course on probability and mathematical statistics for data scientists at MS level
• STT 811, a course on applied statistical methodology for data scientists at MS level
• CSE 482, a computer-science course on big data analysis which includes collecting, storing, preprocessing and analyzing large amounts of data.
• CSE 881, a computer-science course on data mining, at MS level.
• CMSE 830, a foundational course on algorithms and methods in Data Science at MS level
• CMSE 831, a foundational course on applied and computational optimization for data scientists, including implementation, at MS level.

9 credits of elective courses draw from a broad set of courses in the three units. Students with the 6 required courses above are well-prepared for taking electives. The list of electives includes the following, and may include other courses approved by the MS DS committee:

• STT 802, statistical computation using the specialized software R.
• STT 812, a compact course on modern statistical data analysis, including statistical learning
• STT 873, a course on statistical learning and data mining
• STT 874, a course on Bayesian analysis
• STT 875, a course on R programming for statistics
• CSE 802, a course on pattern recognition
• CSE 830, a course on the design and analysis of algorithms
• CSE 847, a course on machine learning
• CSE 849, a course on deep learning
• CMSE/CSE 822, a joint course on parallel computing
• CMSE 402, a course on communication in data science.
• Other CMSE elective courses which are being developed at MSU, some of which are topics courses which have already been taught in CSME, and could be taught jointly with other units. Plans exist for the following topics:
  • CMSE 890 Uncertainty Quantification (has been taught)
  • CMSE 890 Applied Topology (has been taught)
  • CMSE 890 Probabilistic Graphical Models (planned)
  • CMSE 890 Mathematical Image Processing (planned)
  • CMSE 890 Biomedical Science Data (planned)
  • CMSE 890 Applied Machine Learning for Biomedicine (planned)
  • CMSE 890 Computational Methods for Machine Learning (planned)
• Other statistics topics courses STT 890 approved by the MS DS committee.
• Other computer science topics courses CSE 890 approved by the MS DS committee.
• Any graduate-level MSU course covering data science topics which can be approved by the MS DS committee.

A 3-credit capstone course involves completion of an applied, industrial, or governmental data-science project. Credit for this course can be recorded as one of the three topics courses:

• STT 890
• CSE 890
• CMSE 890

The program is building a portfolio of case studies by featuring capstone projects driven by industry, government, or academia clients.

With their computational and analytical skills, the program's graduates can:

• Assimilate, process, and in​terpret data from rich and diverse sources, or from large and potentially distributed data sets.
• Build computational, mathematical and statistical models which infer meaningful relationships in data and can be used for interpretation and predictive analytics.
• Create visualizations to aid in the understanding of their data and models.
• Communicate their findings and insights to a variety of audiences so that decisions can be made, and action can be taken.