The Master of Science in Applied Data Science program at the University of Georgia brought together its inaugural advisory board on March 31, gathering industry leaders and UGA alumni in Athens for a day of conversation, collaboration, and strategic visioning for the program’s future.

The meeting was held at Brooks Hall in a hybrid format, with board members attending in person and via Zoom. Interim Department Head Dr. Dan Hall presided over a full agenda: program history, curriculum updates, a live course demonstration, an industry trends discussion, partnership opportunities, and board governance. Dean Anna Stenport, Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, opened the afternoon with welcoming remarks, setting a collaborative and forward-looking tone for the gathering.

Dr. T.N. Sriram opened the academic program with a presentation on the origins of the MS-ADS, tracing the vision and journey that led to the program’s launch. Dr. Man Basnet, Associate Director of the MS-ADS program, and Dr. Maduranga Dassanayake then presented the program’s current state, including enrollment data, student demographics, and curriculum highlights, along with a live spotlight on STAT 6381E that gave board members a concrete look at what students experience in the classroom. The inaugural cohort consists of 16 enrolled students, all working professionals, drawn from sectors including healthcare, finance, technology, government, and education. The Fall 2026 cohort is already showing strong momentum, with 37 applicants recommended for admission ahead of the July deadline.

Dr. Stephen Balfour, Executive Director of the Office of Online Learning, demonstrated an Agentic AI system operating within eLC, UGA’s learning management platform, a moment that generated significant interest from the group about the role of AI in graduate education. The demonstration reflected the broader infrastructure behind the MS-ADS program’s online delivery, which is supported by Dr. Rachel Cassity, Instructional Designer at UGA, who works closely with faculty to design online courses and oversees the studio production where course lectures are recorded.

The heart of the afternoon was an open discussion on industry trends and the skills gap in data science. Board members drew on their own hiring experiences to identify what separates strong candidates from the rest. The conversation centered on storytelling, problem solving, data visualization, and the ability to explain complex findings to non-technical audiences. The board also flagged AI and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) skills as increasingly critical, and recommended the program consider expanding offerings in experimental design, A/B testing, time series analysis, marketing analytics, computational simulation, and in-depth project-based learning.

The partnerships session explored concrete ways board members and their organizations can engage directly with students, including internship pipelines, capstone project sponsorships, guest lectures, mentorship, and early access to graduates before they reach the open market.

The meeting concluded with a governance discussion. The board will convene twice yearly, in the spring for strategic planning and in the fall for outcomes and curriculum review. Members serve two-year renewable terms and will be led by a chair, vice chair, and secretary, with leadership to be announced shortly. The next meeting is scheduled for November 2026.

Faculty members Drs. Nikhil Srinivasan, Paul Schliekelman, and Isaac Ocloo attended alongside program leadership, reflecting strong departmental engagement in the board’s inaugural gathering. The event was organized with the support of Hailee Talbot, Associate Director of Business and Donor Engagement, Martha Dennis, Marketing Professional, and Susan Ambrosetti, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications for the Franklin College.

UGA faculty and administrators were thrilled with the inaugural board meeting. Interim Department Head Dan Hall expressed his enthusiasm this way:

The initial advisory board meeting was a great success! I was delighted to connect with board members, who have such diverse backgrounds, interesting and inspiring career trajectories, and well-informed opinions about where data science is heading. Our board members are passionate about giving back to the Department of Statistics, the Franklin College, and the University of Georgia through their engagement with the MS-ADS program. It is a privilege to be able to tap into their expertise about what the field needs from the next generation of data science graduates. I’m so grateful for their willingness to help build and strengthen our program.     

About the MS-ADS Advisory Board

The inaugural advisory board of the MS in Applied Data Science program at the University of Georgia brings together thirteen industry leaders spanning financial services, artificial intelligence, retail analytics, public health informatics, EdTech, Bayesian modeling, sports analytics, telecommunications, and data governance.

• Dr. Jien Chen, Principal Data Scientist, Shipt
• Sam Coyne, Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence, Georgia-Pacific
• Dr. Debbie Durrence, Executive Director of Data Governance, Gwinnett County Public Schools
• Scott Edwards, Senior Director of Analytics & Strategy, FIGS
• Hicham El Hassani, Vice President of Data Science, Plume
• Dr. Christopher Fonnesbeck, Principal Data Scientist, PyMC Labs
• Dr. Rechun "Benny" He, Director of Quantitative Analytics, Freddie Mac
• Dr. Linwei Hu, Executive Director and Quantitative Analytics Manager, Wells Fargo
• Dr. Fei Liu, Modeling and AI Executive, Bank of America
• James Pestrak, Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Chewy
• Travis Sari, Director of Data Science, FanDuel
• Dr. Eldin Talundzic, Public Health Data Science Leader
• Wright Turner, Sr. Director of Intelligent Operations, Cox Communications