Data Scientist: The Engineer of the Future

Wil M. P. van der Aalst

Abstract: Although our capabilities to store and process data have been increasing exponentially since the 1960s, suddenly many organizations realize that survival is not possible without exploiting available data intelligently. Out of the blue, “Big Data” has become a topic in board-level discussions. The abundance of data will change many jobs across all industries. Moreover, also scientific research is becoming more data-driven. Therefore, we reflect on the emerging data science discipline. Just like computer science emerged as a new discipline from mathematics when computers became abundantly available, we now see the birth of data science as a new discipline driven by the torrents of data available today. We believe that the data scientist will be the engineer of the future. Therefore, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) established the Data Science Center Eindhoven (DSC/e). This article discusses the data science discipline and motivates its importance.