Department of Computational and Data Sciences

The new Computational and Data Sciences Undergraduate Program at George Mason University

Kirk Borne, John Wallin, and Robert Weigel

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Abstract. We describe the new undergraduate science degree program in Computational and Data Sciences (CDS) at George Mason Univer- sity (Mason), which began offering courses for both major (B.S.) and minor degrees in Spring 2008. The overarching theme and goal of the program are to train the next-generation scientists in the tools and tech- niques of cyber-enabled science (e-Science) to prepare them to confront the emerging petascale challenges of data-intensive science. The Mason CDS program has a significantly stronger focus on data-oriented ap- proaches to science than do most computational science and engineering programs. The program has been designed specifically to focus both on simulation (Computational Science) and on data-intensive applications (Data Science). New courses include Introduction to Computational & Data Sciences, Scientific Data and Databases, Scientific Data & Infor- mation Visualization, Scientific Data Mining, and Scientific Modeling & Simulation. This is an interdisciplinary science program, drawing exam- ples, classroom materials, and student activities from a broad range of physical and biological sciences. We will describe some of the motiva- tions and early results from the program1 . More information is available at http://cds.gmu.edu/.