{"id":292107,"date":"2026-09-23T07:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/292107\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T07:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:32:08","slug":"penn-engineering-announces-joint-masters-degree-in-ai-data-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/292107\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Engineering announces joint master\u2019s degree in AI, data science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penn\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences recently launched a master\u2019s degree in data science and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The Master of Science program<\/a> \u2014\u00a0which will take its first students in fall 2027 \u2014 will be jointly administered<\/a> by the Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering departments. The degree is designed to give students an interdisciplinary technical foundation while also allowing them to specialize in either data science or artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

According to CIS professor and program co-director Linh Phan, the new degree is the \u201cnext evolution\u201d of Penn Engineering\u2019s existing master\u2019s program in data science.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Students complete coursework and research projects that apply AI and data science to real-world problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is no longer enough to analyze data, train models, or build infrastructure separately,\u201d Phan wrote in a statement. \u201cStudents need to understand how data, algorithms, models, and infrastructure interact in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Instead of adding \u201cAI\u201d to the title of Penn\u2019s existing master of data science program, faculty reorganized the program around both fields. Students currently enrolled in the data science program will have the option to transfer into the new degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CIS professor Susan Davidson, the degree\u2019s other co-director, explained in an interview that this decision is a product of the two fields becoming inseparable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just how do we make sense of the data, but how do we build systems that reason with it?\u201d Davidson said. \u201cTheoretically, you could create a new master\u2019s in AI, but it\u2019s so completely interwoven with the data that it made more sense to expand the existing, highly successful program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students in the program will have the flexibility to take courses related to data science and AI in social science, medicine, and business across other schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really think that it\u2019s important for our students to see the context in which these methods and techniques are going to be used, and so there is some latitude there,\u201d Davidson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rise of generative AI also shaped the program\u2019s design, according to Phan.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents should use those tools, and they will,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBut the goal is not just to judge whether an AI system\u2019s output can be trusted. It is to understand how these systems work and how they can fail or cause harm, to recognize when they should not be used, and to build better and safer ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

This degree was developed as Penn continues to expand access to artificial intelligence across the University. Earlier this month, Penn announced that community members can gain access<\/a> to Anthropic\u2019s Claude Enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences recently launched a master\u2019s degree in data science and artificial intelligence.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-292107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}