IBM Creates Big Data and Analytics Curriculum

IBM Corporation has added nine
new academic collaborations to its more than 1,000 partnerships with
universities across the globe, focusing on big data and analytics – all of
which are designed to prepare students for the 4.4 million jobs that will be
created wolrdwide to support big data by 2015.

The company also announced more than $100,000 in awards for big data curricula.

As part of IBM’s Academic Initiative, the company is launching new curricula
focusing on big data and analytics with Georgetown
University, George Washington University,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Missouri, as well as a new
addition to partnership with Northwestern
University. Internationally, IBM is partnering with Dublin City University, Mother Teresa Women’s University
in India, the National University of Singapore,
and the Philippines’
Commission on Higher Education to offer data-driven degree programs,
coursework and specialization tracks.

IBM is also announcing the winners of its 2013 big
data and analytics Faculty Awards
in which 14 university professors from around the world will receive $10,000
each for top rated curricula designed to develop the business and technical
skills required for data-crunching jobs. The winning proposals include programs
focused on computer science/electrical engineering, business administration,
economics, strategic management, and math and statistics.

"Leaders in business, education and
government must take action to foster a new generation of talent with the
technical expertise and unique ideas to make the most of this tsunami of big
data," said Richard Rodts, manager of global academic programs,
IBM.  "To narrow this skills
gap, IBM is committed to partnering with universities around the world to provide
students with big data and analytics curriculum to make an impact in today’s
data-driven marketplace."

The US Bureau of Labor predicts a 24%
increase in demand for professionals with data analytics skills during the next
eight years.  The need for this specialized talent is fueled by the
explosion of big data – or the 2.5 quintillion bytes of information generated
daily from such sources as sensors, RFID networks, mobile devices and social
media.  As a result, employers in every industry are seeking job
candidates who can uncover insights from data to solve problems, act on
findings, enter new markets, and gain a competitive advantage.

To narrow this gap, IBM is collaborating with more than 1,000 academic partners
to develop curriculum that reflects the mix of technical and problem-solving
skills that is necessary to prepare students for big data and analytics
careers, across all industries. These collaborations span a variety of majors –
including business, marketing, mathematics and health services – providing
schools with access to IBM big data and analytics software, curriculum
materials, case study projects, and IBM data scientists who visit classes as
guest lecturers.

The following academic
institutions
are joining forces with IBM:

• Dublin City University (DCU) is teaming
  with to create a new Masters Degree in Computer Science with big data,
  Business Analytics and Smarter Cities. The Masters in Computing (Data
  Analytics) course content has been developed jointly by IBM and DCU to equip
  students with deep analytical skills to support the changing face of business
  today and will help graduate students to develop critical IT skills for urban
  analysis, consumer behavior, social networks, sentiment analysis, healthcare,
  and network security. The new program will provide exclusive
  resources including access to real-world IBM case studies from cities and
  organizations around the world. It will be delivered by experts from DCU and
  IBM and will facilitate collaborative research projects between the two
  organizations.
• The George Washington University School of
  Business is partnering to launch a Master of Science degree in
  Business Analytics this fall. The program is offered full-time for students and
  part-time for working professionals seeking to enhance their careers. On the
  technical side, the degree features courses ranging from how to build
  predictive models to hands-on software training.  On the experiential
  side, the program offers workshops on project management and communications. To
  help students fine-tune their big data skills for specific industries, GWU’s
  degree also features career track electives, such as healthcare, supply chain,
  marketing and sports analytics.
• The Georgetown University McDonough School
  of Business recently offered a one-week intensive course during the week of
  July 22, 2013 providing MBA students with a hands-on introduction to big data.
  Students used emerging technologies including IBM InfoSphere BigInsights to
  dive deeper into sales data, for example, to answer questions about consumer
  trends, including spending and buying patterns. The course introduced students
  to the language and methods associated with big data, enabling students to
  learn how to improve business decision-making. The university will continue to
  teach big data methodology in select courses moving forward.
• The University of Missouri
  College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science will offer a new
  undergraduate course titled Big Data Analytics in the
  fall 2013 semester to provide students with experience using advanced analytics
  technologies and techniques that enable businesses to extract insights from big
  data with sophistication, speed and accuracy. Using IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
  and InfoSphere Streams software, students will process and explore data to
  extract insight to make informed decisions, whether that data is in-place, in
  motion or at rest, in large volumes, or structured or unstructured.
• Mother Teresa Women’s
  University in India is using IBM analytics to promote academic success, by
  training their management students on predictive analysis and reporting
  solutions. The recent three-month long course, designed by IBM for the
  university, has enabled educators to teach more effectively, helping management
  students to gain critical analytical skills, and support more accurate and
  insightful institutional research and decision-making.
• The National University of Singapore (NUS)
  and IBM, in partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board, will
  establish the NUS Center for Business Analytics to develop capabilities in big
  data and analytics. The Center will offer an IBM-supported Master of Science in
  Business Analytics (MSBA) degree and IBM will provide faculty and students with expertise, as well as access to the company’s analytics solutions. The
  MSBA program will be conducted by full-time leading experts and faculty members
  from the business and computing schools of NUS.
• Northwestern University School of
  Continuing Studies, which launched two analytics graduate degrees last year
  with IBM, is expanding big data curricula in two of its continuing education
  programs. Degrees in Information Systems
  and in Predictive Analytics will both include a new Analytics
  and Business Intelligence track, designed to give students
  experience solving real-world business challenges through use of big data
  technologies. Students will learn about current and emerging big data solutions
  in a project-based environment that provides a foundational knowledge around
  big data – while also inspiring students to exploit big data by studying
  business applications and trends.
• The Philippines’ Commission on
  Higher Education (CHED) is cooperating with IBM to develop specialization
  tracks on business analytics, as a supplement to existing business
  administration and IT programs offered by colleges and
  universities across the country. The special tracks, to be rolled out this
  2013-2014 school year will feature an interdisciplinary approach, taking into
  consideration the relationships among different stakeholders who deal with
  data, within businesses and organizations. The new ‘electives’ will include an
  internship and cover a range of core big data and analytics skill-sets,
  including business analytics, enterprise data management and modeling.
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is combining
  forces with IBM to offer a new graduate program in fall 2013, to prepare
  students for big data and analytics careers. Offered through the Lally
  School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer’s new Master of Science in business analytics degree will be a one year, 30 credit program for which IBM
  will provide curriculum materials, case study projects, software solutions and
  guest lecturers. IBM recently donated a Watson system to Rensselaer, to help
  faculty and students explore new uses for cognitive computing and expand their
  understanding of big data and analytics.

IBM Awards Universities for Big Data
and Analytics Curricula Development
IBM also announced the winners of its 2013 Big Data
and Analytics Faculty Awards in which 14 university professors will receive
$10,000 each for top rated curricula and research that mix business and
technical skills. The fourteen winning proposals include programs and research
focused on computer science/electrical engineering, business administration,
economics, strategic management, and math and statistics.

The winners include:

• 
  Nitesh Chawla, Frank Freimann
  Collegiate, associate professor, University of
  Notre Dame: Develop novel data science program that requires immersion of
  an individual in a domain to innovate by conducting data exploration, feature
  engineering, machine learning, inform system design and database design, and
  conduct what-if analysis.
• David Dischiave, assistant professor,
  Syracuse University, School of Information
  Studies: Assess computing best practices for industry professionals to
  select the computing for appropriate use (fit for purpose) where the solution
  can be deployed for best results. Findings will guide the development of course
  materials for the data analytics, database management systems, database
  security, data warehousing and data mining courses.
• David Douglas, professor, University
  of Arkansas: Development of course modules designed for teaching customer
  insights and discovery using a number of datasets hosted by the University of
  Arkansas including demographic data provided by major corporations with a focus
  on data mining and visualization of big data.
• Michael Garrett, professor, Universiteit Leiden (Netherlands), general and scientific Director of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy
  (ASTRON): Develop a data intensive digital radio astronomy instrument to study
  time-variable radio phenomena, with a particular focus on SETI (Search for
  Extraterrestrial Intelligence). A range of novel algorithms will be developed
  for this system, including generic anomaly detection, statistical analysis and
  machine learning techniques that would be applicable to other fields outside of
  astronomy.
• Jose Incera, professor, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico:
  Develop big data laboratory projects and courseware to enable students to
  become data architects, information strategists, big datad evelopers, and business analysts.
• John Keane, professor, University of Manchester (UK): Develop
  technical case studies investigating design/implementation of big data problems
  for use in enhanced data engineering course.
• Svetlana Maltseva, dean of businessi nformatics, Higher School of Economics
  (Moscow): Develop a new master’s program focused on development of appropriate
  skills of the students in big data.
• Jeff Pittges, associate professor, Radford University:
  Extend Database Instructional Games (DIG) online learning environment to
  include InfoSphere BigInsights for text analysis of customer feedback and add
  Cognos to replace Microsoft Access Reports and QlikView dashboards.
• Jeffrey Popyack, associate professor, Drexel University: Build
  curriculum to introduce frameworks such as Amazon S3, InfoSphere BigInsights,
  Hadoop, and MapReduce into the Computer Architecture and Artificial
  Intelligence tracks of the Computer Science curriculum, with an emphasis on
  parallelism, scalability, big data and machine learning.
• W. ‘R.P.‘ Raghupathi, professor, Fordham University: Develop new big data
  analytics and applied practicum course elective enabling students to
  understand strategic issues surrounding big data analytics such as governance,
  ethics, privacy and security, and data quality.
• Alexander Rasin, assistant professor, DePaul University:
  To provide graduating professionals with practical data mining skills Dr. Rasin
  will develop a graduate data mining course based on Apache Hadoop and Mahout
  that leverages IBM BigInsights and SmartCloud.
• Dr. Praveen Rao, assistant professor, University of Missouri-Kansas City:
  Develop a new big data course that will cover the storage, retrieval, analysis,
  and visualization of large volumes of structured and unstructured data using
  IBM software and SmartCloud.
• Dr. Jan Sedivy, Czech Technical University
  (Ceske vysoke uceni technicke v Praze – Prague): Extend current Mobile
  Development course to big data and cloud, including lectures by IBM experts
  motivating students to study Map-Reduce programming to prepare them for the
  career of big data developers and to build start-up businesses in this area.
• Janet Smart, GOTO academic projectm anager, Saïd Business
  School Oxford University (UK): Create a learning environment
  that will equip students with the skills and insight to understand the issues
  around the growth and use of big data.

The IBM Faculty Awards support basic research, curriculum innovation, and educational
assistance in focus areas that are fundamental to innovation in the 21st
Century and strategic to IBM’s core business. The focus areas of particular
interest include: smarter planet and cities; healthcare and personalized
education; mobile first and social technologies; big data and business
analytics; cyber security and cloud computing; and multi-core and hybrid
systems.

In most cases, completed course materials will be
provided to the IBM academic initiative for use by other member schools.

About IBM Big Data and Analytics
Each day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated by a variety of
sources – from climate information, to posts on social media sites, and from
purchase transaction records to healthcare medical images. At IBM we believe
that big data and analytics are a catalyst to help clients become more
competitive and drive growth. IBM is helping clients harness this big data to
uncover valuable insights, and transform their business. It has established
the world’s deepest and broadest portfolio of big data technologies and
solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware.