Data Science Program

What is Data Science?

Data Science sits at the intersection of mathematics and computer science and is applied to a boundless set of disciplines – including health, physical sciences, business, environmental studies, sociology, and political science.

Data Scientists collect, synthesize, and analyze big data to drive scientific discovery and business opportunities. Data Scientists are skilled in programming languages like R and Python and leverage advanced knowledge in statistics, machine learning, and data visualization to meet the demands of modern business and science.

Who Hires Data Scientists?

In short… everyone! Companies in almost every business sector imaginable recognize the need to leverage data to predict trends, inform decisions, and make breakthroughs. Data Scientists are employed by hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, financial and trading firms, sports teams, marketing agencies, and of course tech companies.

Data Scientists entering the job market with skills in programming, statistics, machine learning, and data visualization have their pick of high paying, high quality jobs at some of the most prestigious and exciting companies in the country.

• Average annual salary for data analysts: $59,732/year (source)
• Average annual salary for data scientists: $95,998/year (source)
• Job outlook: from 2013 to 2018, the number of data science job postings grew by 256% (source)
• Data scientist job: #1 in list of best 50 jobs in America (source)

The LinkedIn August 2018 workforce report found a 150,000+ labor shortage for Data Scientists, with particularly elevated demand in NJ/NY, SF, and LA metro areas. Glassdoor ranked Data Scientist as the #1 job in America in 2019, with a median base salary of 108K/year, and has been ranked the #1 best paying job out of college in 2019. Pricewaterhouse Coopers has estimated that 27% of employers are looking for a Master’s degree when filling Data Science positions. That same study identifies New Jersey and New York as the #1 region in terms of number of job postings.

Want to see who is hiring Data Scientists now? Take a look at the following job boards that focus on data science jobs:

• AnalyticTalent.com
• DataJobs.com
• Kaggle
• KDnuggets
• icrunchdata

Learn more about Ramapo’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Data Science.

Data Science News

March 5, 2020Convolutional Neural Networks for Face Recognition

ATTENTION: This event will NOT take place as scheduled. Due to the steps RCNJ is taking to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, campus events have been postponed until at least April 5th, 2020. This event will be rescheduled, and this page will be updated as we have more information. Join us on March 26th to hear Dr. Ausif Mahmood present research on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) used for face recognition. Dr. Mahmood is the Director of The School of Engineering at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, CT. His research areas involve Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, ... Read More

February 10, 2020Ramapo adds new Mathematics faculty to support Data Science

Ramapo College is excited to welcome Matthew Jobrack to our Mathematics faculty. Matthew Jobrack holds a B.S. in mathematics from Longwood University with a concentration in secondary education, a M.A. in mathematics from Appalachian State University, and a M.S in Statistics from Washington State University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in mathematics at Washington State University specializing in analytic number theory, with additional research interests in statistical wildlife population models. He has coauthored peer-reviewed publications in both mathematics and math education. He currently lives with his wife, daughter, 2 cats and 1 dog. Read More

January 13, 2020Ramapo welcomes new Data Science faculty member

Ramapo College is excited to welcome new Data Science faculty member Dr. Debbie Yuster. Dr. Yuster holds a B.A. in Mathematics with a concentration in Computer Science from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia, specializing in the field of Combinatorics. Dr. Yuster joins us from SUNY Maritime College, where she has been a math professor for over a decade, earning accolades such as the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Yuster served as a Visiting Data Science Scholar at the Wall Street Journal, and has cultivated industry partnerships leading to student research projects. She has authored ... Read More

December 10, 2019Ramapo welcomes first new Data Science faculty member

Ramapo College is excited to welcome our first new Data Science faculty member, Osei Tweneboah. Osei is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Computational Science Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and will be joining Ramapo this coming Fall - where he will be teaching courses in Python and Applied Statistics. Osei’s research interests include data science and stochastic analysis with applications to big data analytics and complex data sets arising in finance, health care, geophysics etc. Osei has co-authored fourteen (14) peer reviewed papers in the areas of statistics and data science, applied mathematics and computational ... Read More

November 20, 2019Data Science at ESPN: NBA player performance

Join us on December 5th to hear Brian Macdonald showcase how Data Science identifies the value of box score statistics in estimating NBA players' contribution to on-court performance. Dr. Macdonald is the Director of Sports Analytics at ESPN, and has a doctorate in Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. Read More

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RCNJ Data Science Contacts