Computable Awards Nomination for Amsterdam School of Data Science

The newly created Amsterdam School of Data Science has been successfully nominated for the Computable Awards 2017: ‘ICT Educator of the Year’, the winner of which will be announced on 31 October.

The Amsterdam School of Data Science is an initiative of Amsterdam Data Science, a network organisation comprising AUAS, CWI, UvA and VU. The knowledge institutes aim to reduce the shortage of data scientists in the labour market, with Europe’s biggest data science education offering. Kajsa Ollongren, alderman and deputy mayor of Amsterdam, opened the official launch of the new education platform on 24 March 2017 with over 400 attendees.

Shortgae of 8,000 data scientists

Data science – discovering hidden patterns in large amounts of data – is more important than ever before. Big data and data science are at the heart of every innovation: from popular apps like Google Maps to self-propelled cars, and from terrorism analysis to medical diagnosis algorithms. The potential value of data for the Dutch economy is estimated at 45 billion euros by the National Think Tank. In almost every profession, analytic skills play a key role and more and more organisations are looking for talent – it is expected that there will be a shortage of 8,000 data scientists by next year. McKinsey also sees the demand for data scientists significantly greater than the number of people currently studying.

In order to meet this shortage, Amsterdam Data Science (AUAS, CWI, UvA, VU), have established the Amsterdam School of Data Science. The aim is to show potential students the enormous opportunities in the labour market available to them. The Amsterdam School of Data Science therefore works closely with business and government and also helps students to start up their own business.

Amsterdam at the forefront

Amsterdam is already at the forefront of Europe in terms of size and variety of data science education. On the School website there are more than 200 data science related programmes – across all application areas – taught by world-leading researchers. The Analytics Academy, also part of Amsterdam Data Science, which focusses on professional education, won a Computable Award in the category ‘ICT educator of the year’ last year.

The Computable Awards will be awarded this year for the twelfth time. The prize ceremony of the Awards is Tuesday 31 October 2017, from 17.30 at the Beatrix Theater in Utrecht. In 2016, the VU, together with IBM, won the award for the best ‘ICT project of the year in education’ for their Watson Innovation Course.

You can read more on our nomination on the Computable Awards website HERE

Voting for the Awards will open on 04 July, more information HERE