The School of Data Science is teaming up with the UVA Brain Institute, UVA Research Computing, and the UVA Department of Psychology to create a high-performance computing system that will support all of the neuroscientific research and computation across Grounds, called the NEO System.

Meet the 2020-2021 MSDS Student Council! Learn more about where they are from, their positions on student council, and why they chose data science.

Shannon Paylor has worked in two national parks - Grand Tetons and Yosemite - and brings a passion for the intersection of data science and environmental science to the MSDS ‘21 cohort. After having more experience in analytics at Merkle, a global performance marketing agency in Charlottesville, and attending the Datapalooza and WIDS at the School of Data Science, Shannon knew she wanted to pursue her MSDS.

Gabriel Rushin, MSDS '17 alum, currently works as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer Manager at Procter & Gamble, while also getting his Master's in Computer Science. Throughout his career at P&G, he has worked in several areas of the company, including IT, North America Beauty, and machine learning models.

Jack Van Horn, Professor at the School of Data Science and in the Department of Psychology at UVA, is working with Andrei Irimia, a neuroscientist and professor of Gerontology at the University of Southern California to map the entire human connectome, including the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system. The implications of this for research and clinical use could be vast. 

The Board of Visitors officially approved the schematic design of the new building for the School of Data Science. This project is for the construction of a 60,000 square foot facility located at the intersection of Emmett and Ivy Roads, at the nexus of Central and North Grounds.

The online, part-time MSDS program allows students to take their courses from all over, attending the same classroom online. Logging 138 hours of virtual class time per student, students completed their evening course work while continuing to work full-time jobs.

Age is a well-known factor that influences the severity and fatality of COVID-19.  In addition, male and female patients are known, at least anecdotally, to fare quite differently in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Why might this be, and can these observations help guide potential new treatments? Motivated by these questions, Dean of the School of Data Science, Phil Bourne, and SDS Senior Scientist, Cam Mura, are part of an international team that has begun examining these possible interconnections.

For their capstone project, MSDS students Matt, Ben, Spencer, and Chad created a model to forecast the 2020 presidential election. Their model is a combination of a polling-based model and a fundamentals model.

Five MSDS students are living on the Range this year. These students explain the integral part this has played helping them form community amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. They have enjoyed taking some of their classes on Zoom together, collaborating, and meeting students in other programs.