Center for Digital Technology, Analytics, and Data Science

The Center for Digital Technology, Analytics, and Data Science (CTADS) seeks to integrate and enrich the various Smith School activities related to analytics, artificial intelligence, data science, and digital technologies. It provides a focal “home” for research and outreach activities in these areas. It includes several major constituent activities: The Smith Analytics Consortium, the Center for Digital Insights and Strategies (DIGITS), the Center for Complexity in Business and the Health Insights Artificial Intelligence Lab. It also sponsors a number of other activities that bring together faculty, students and external business and government organizations with interests in its intellectual themes.

Background

It is an inconvertible fact that today, technological advances in computing capacity and storage, the abundance of structured and unstructured data, coupled with scientific advances in computational algorithms and artificial intelligence, have created a perfect storm of disruption. Collectively these developments have profound implications for the future of work, of commercial and public sector organizations, and of societies. Fueled by the striking increases in computing power and availability of digital data, organizations across the spectrum including business, government, and non-profits are turning to artificial intelligence, big data and analytics to improve the quality of managerial decisions.

There is also considerable demand from students for programs and curricula related to these areas, and a robust employment market for these skills. The Smith School has significant research and thought leadership capabilities in the areas of digital technologies, analytics and data science, distributed across multiple functional departments and centers of excellence within the school. Smith faculty are among the best in the nation in these areas, and can be a source of competitive differentiation. There are unexploited opportunities for creating greater synergy and leveraging our distributed capabilities for enhanced visibility and impact.