UC San Diego’s Newest School Merges Data Science and AI Innovation

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This article originally appeared in the fall 2024 issue of UC San Diego Magazine as “Where Data Meets AI.”

Artificial intelligence, computing and data science have rapidly reshaped — and are continually reshaping — modern life. 

This summer, the UC Regents voted to approve a new school at UC San Diego to address the growing importance of these disciplines. The fourth school to be added to the campus in the 21st century, the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS) joins together the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a national leader in high-performance and data-intensive computing, with the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, a pioneering interdisciplinary institute that advances data science and AI education and research.

“SCIDS meets a critical need in modern society to transform data into actionable knowledge,” says Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Computing and data literacy are key to meeting the needs of students and the state of California, advancing critical research areas like the future of artificial intelligence and bolstering the university’s mission of public service.”

Actionable knowledge, or information that can assess situations and take action to solve real-world problems, is core to the new school. SCIDS seeks to lead innovations that will help educate a workforce of the future and improve the human condition by educating the next generation of highly skilled workers who will drive the application of AI.

“The new school will accelerate the translation of foundational research into practice on societal problems ranging from climate change mitigation (wildfires, extreme weather, water management and resilient agriculture) to social justice issues (food security, housing shortages, mass shootings and equal access to opportunity) to health care (personalized medicine and public health),” says Frank Würthwein, the director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and professor in the Department of Physics and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute.  

 The new school’s roots extend to the 1980s, when the U.S. National Science Foundation established the San Diego Supercomputer Center as part of a national effort to address a shortage of advanced computing resources. The center provides computing resources to UC San Diego, the UC system, academic institutions across the nation, as well as a range of domestic stakeholders and state and federal agencies. It provides researchers with in-house computational and data resources to accelerate scientific discovery.

The campus established the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute in 2018 with philanthropic support from Taner Halıcıoğlu ’96, an alumnus of computer science and engineering. The first undergraduate data science major was established in 2016 as part of the computer science and engineering department before it was transferred to the new institute.

By harnessing the depth of the talent and experience of both the supercomputer center and the data science institute, SCIDS will be able to “involve new synergies and realize tremendous new possibilities in creating talent in emerging areas,” says Rajesh Gupta, a distinguished professor of computer science and engineering, interim dean of SCIDS  and the founding — and current — director of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. 

The school currently includes 50 faculty members across 16 academic disciplines.