Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University

Women Have Been Shut Out of Computer and Data Science. BU CDS Is Opening the Door

• Across the United States, women make up roughly half the workforce and roughly half the population. But, zoom in on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), and it’s a starkly different story. In data science, for example, only about 15 to 20 percent of professionals in the field are women.
• Boston University, however, is bucking this trend. The University’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), which launched in 2021, has been uniquely successful in recruiting—and retaining—women in the field. Women made up 46 percent of its inaugural class, and it’s grown from there. Of the Class of 2028, 47 percent are women.

Data science is a rapidly growing field providing students with exciting career paths and opportunities for advanced study. It draws from and builds upon the traditional STEM disciplines, to extract knowledge and insights from both structured and unstructured data.

• In our program, you’ll receive some of the technical training of a traditional STEM degree program. But rather than studying just one discipline, you’ll use computer science and math and statistics tools to build models from data that can be used to understand phenomena, answer questions, and more.
• You’ll combine computational and inferential thinking to collect, explore, and analyze data for the purpose of identifying patterns, drawing conclusions, and making predictions about underlying, often-complex, real-world processes.
• Data science is inherently interdisciplinary, given the diversity of disciplines needed to understand and model processes, which may span natural, physical, social, economic, and humanistic dimensions. The degree-granting, academic programs offered by CDS reflect that, preparing you to pursue careers in which you lead independent, cutting-edge research and development, whether in academia or industry.