Data Science

Data has been labeled the new oil, the new gold and the new currency of our era. Born at the intersection of computer science, engineering, statistics and applied mathematics, Data Science is a new, pervasive paradigm that promises to turn ever growing amounts of heterogeneous and complex data into knowledge. Exploiting sophisticated data analysis techniques and scalable computing infrastructures, Data Science is rapidly changing communication, business and policy making. It is also profoundly changing scientific research – where top-down, model-driven approaches are supplemented with bottom-up, data-driven ones. In disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, biology, medicine and physics, data are no longer used exclusively to validate existing theories and models; massive datasets are also mined to discover patterns, “learn” predictive models and suggest new theories.

The Ph.D. in Data Science leverages a critical mass of faculty, laboratories and pioneering projects accumulated in the Pisa area since the early 2000’s. As a consortium across the University of Pisa, the ISTI and IIT institutes of the CNR, and the Scuola Normale, Scuola Sant’Anna and IMT (Lucca), the Ph.D. is distinctly poised to support interdisciplinary, data-driven research and innovation within an ethical framework of transparency, privacy and responsibility. The program is unique in its kind; it will train a new generation of researchers combining domain competences (e.g., in the social, physical and life sciences) with Data Science skills – including methods and technologies for harvesting, mining, analyzing, visualizing and narrating data, a deep understanding of their legal and ethical implications, and of the social impact of Data Science.