Data Science and Society

Program and courses

Data Science and Society is a one-year multidisciplinary Master’s program where you learn how to use data science methodologies to build upon the domain-specific knowledge you have already acquired. 

You will learn how to:

• Write code in python, R, and/or SQL to transform and visualize data and then identify patterns and gather insights from large and complex datasets.
• Build, train, test and evaluate machine learning models. You learn to select the model(s) most appropriate for the data you have and the task you want to solve.
• Translate the results of your machine learning analyses into actionable solutions and recommendations.
• Use these tools and skills ethically within the EU laws and regulations for data privacy.

Tracks

You will be admitted to one of four tracks. This is to encourage you to select elective courses and a thesis project that align with the knowledge you have gained in your previous education. The content of your previous education determines to which track(s) you can be admitted.

• Business track

  Work with real-world data from customers and businesses to build models that generate insights and recommendations to improve business strategy.

  Representative elective courses:
  Analysis of Customer Data | Business Analytics & Business Intelligence | Interactive Data Transformation

• Governance track
  Use data science methods that can minimize bias and provide explainable predictions. Work with data at local, national, and international scales to produce insights that can lead to fair, transparent, and sustainable governance and policy.

  Representative elective course:
  Governance & Policymaking | Data Science: Sustainability, Privacy & Security | Analytics for Business & Governance

• Health track
  Harness the variety of data sources in the health domain (medical images, text, demographics, etcetera) to design and implement analyses that can be used to improve health and wellbeing.

  Representative elective courses:
  Health Analytics | Bayesian Multilevel Models | Deep Learning

• Media track
  Employ advanced signal processing and extraction techniques to generate insights about how people communicate to and with each other across a variety of mediums.

  Representative elective courses:
  Natural Language Processing | Complex Systems | Computational Statistics

The examples of thesis topics on the Programs and courses page illustrate the wide variety of data and research questions you can focus on within the various tracks.

Check the program and courses

Career prospects

Data Science knowledge and skills are becoming more and more relevant in all domains of society. Companies and organizations therefore highly value employees that have this knowledge and these skills.

Graduates work or start for example as:

• Data Analyst bij Eneco 
• Consultant at Capgemini 
• Data Scientist bij ABN Amro Bank
• New Product Introduction Engineer at Tesla
• Marketing Science Analyst bij KLM

Alumni facts

• Gross monthly income one year after graduation: € 3617,-
• Average number of months between graduation and first job: 4.3 months

Source: National Alumni Survey, 2021 | n = 25

Check the career prospects

Application and admission

This Master's program starts:

End of August and End of January (both the Master’s and the pre-Master’s program)

Best preparatory programs:

A Bachelor's or Master's degree in a field of study related to your preferred track, for example:

• Business: Business Administration, Economics, Finance & Control, Human Resource Management, Organization Studies
• Governance: Business Administration, Economics, Human Resource Management, Law, Organization Studies, Political Science, Public Administration, Sociology
• Health: Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, Sociology, or another program focusing on health, wellbeing or healthcare
• Media: Business Communication, Communication and Information Sciences, Communication and Marketing, Communication and Media Studies, Communication Science, Design and Technology, Linguistics, Journalism

Pre-Master's program

Open for both Research University students and students from a Dutch University of Applied Sciences (hbo).

Tuition fees and scholarships

Please check the information about the tuition fees and the scholarships available for international students.

Interested in this Master’s program?

Check your eligibility

Related Master's programs

• Data Science in Business and Entrepreneurship
• Marketing Analytics
• Business Analytics and Operations Research
• Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence