Data Science at University of Minnesota

Recently, many people have asked me about the data science program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. I am continuing my 2nd semester in data science program. This blog is a compilation of my personal experience in last 7 months. I have a background in Computer Science and this post might be a little biased.

Courses

Even though data science is a different program at UMN, we closely share coursework with Computer Science graduate students. I think there is not much difference between two programs except for the fact that data science masters students need to take at least two statistics courses, which is very helpful for any aspirant data scientist.

A diverse set of courses are offered from Computer Science, Statistics and Bio-Statistics department. You get the complete flexibility to chose your own set of courses. Unfortunately, no intense deep learning course is offered. Although, deep learning is covered in one of the machine learning class. Please check here for a complete list of courses.

Research

Many of our professors work on data mining and robotics. There are many groups working in these fields. We also have research groups in Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, NeuroScience and Spatial Data Science. Some of the professors are pretty flexible also. If you want to work in Natural Language Processing or Theoretical Machine Learning, UMN should be your last option.

Apart from these, you can also look for ongoing research in Statistics and Bio-Statistics department.

Teaching and Research Assistantship

Most of the teaching and research assistantship positions go to the Ph.D. students and 2nd-year masters students. Based on my knowledge, TAs are referral based. But few of my friends were able to grab an assistantship in the first year. It is really difficult to get a research assistantship in Computer Science department, although you can look for data science assistantship in other departments.

Weather

Minneapolis is one of the coldest city and temperature sometimes drops to -35 C during January. For 22 years, I lived close to the equator and for me, it was a drastic change in weather. But It is not that bad as it sounds. The city is well connected with light rail and bus transit. So with a good winter jacket, you should be fine. However, Weather is secondary for most people. :)

Internship

Mostly local companies and few big Computer Science MNCs visit Career fair, but it is not that helpful. There are many healthcare companies in Minneapolis and they offer internship positions in Data Science.

Many people have gotten an internship in our batch, many are still searching. But this is pretty much the scene everywhere. The situation in California might be bit different. Most of the internship calls are referral basis in the United States. So with a good network, you will be able to get calls. If you want to get an internship in data science, spend some time doing some good projects.