Designed to Meet Unprecedented Demand in Career Field

Designed to meet the need for a new breed of employees who are skilled at using a blend of science, art and business to leverage the ever expanding amount of data from a variety of sources into a competitive advantage, the University of California, Irvine Extension is offering a new data science certificate program online for winter quarter 2014. The program provides the skills required to become a data scientist and provides existing data analysts with the opportunities to broaden skills. A course titled, "Introduction to Data Science" will be offered from Jan. 13 through March 9 and will provide an overview of basic techniques required in the field of data science. For those interested in learning more about the certificate program and how to plan an educational path in this field, a webinar titled, "Data Science: Educational Planning Session" will take place on Thursday, Dec. 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST.

"With recent mention from USA Today indicating that there are only 20 percent of data scientists available to meet the unprecedented demand, there is a great advantage for those interested in shifting gears to join this growing career field," said Dr. Dave Dimas, director of engineering, sciences and information technology at UC Irvine Extension. "Offering a complete certificate program online helps fill the void as it is not easy to obtain the knowledge and skills needed under a single traditional undergraduate or graduate degree. Program participants will stay ahead of the competition and gain that competitive advantage needed to help impact the success of businesses in various industries."

As a required course for program participants, "Introduction to Data Science" will allow course participants to learn about data design, management and manipulation tools and processes commonly used by data scientists. Course content will include data analysis, statistical modeling, data engineering, relational databases, SQL and NoSQL, manipulation of data at scale (big data), algorithms for data mining, data quality, remediation and consistency operations. The online course will run from Jan. 13 through March 9.

To learn more about the certificate program or to register for the course, visit http://unex.uci.edu/areas/it/data_science/ .