Stanley Ahalt was tapped to lead UNC’s new School of Data Science and Society. The school is planned to launch in the fall.

UNC described the School of Data Science and Society as “emblematic of Carolina’s collaborative culture and how faculty solve big problems through an interdisciplinary team-based approach.”

Ahalt serves as director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) which is a collaboration between UNC, North Carolina State University and Duke University. He previously spoke with 97.9 The Hill about how RENCI’s work using data to battle the opioid epidemic.

University leadership said that role has prepared Ahalt to be dean.

“As inaugural dean, Ahalt will recruit and retain distinguished faculty and staff, bring together varied expertise, empower innovation and promote collaboration that benefits the next generation of data science scholars,” UNC leadership said in a message to students.

Ahalt is a professor in the computer science department and serves as associate director of informatics and data science in the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute. He received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Clemson University and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Additionally, he helped launch the Carolina Health Informatics Program within the UNC School of Information and Library Science and launched the National Consortium for Data Science – a public-private partnership supporting open-source data management software.

In its message to campus, UNC noted Ahalt had helped to secure $34.5 million in funding for data science grants to help the university be a leader in the industry.

“We believe that [his]  passion for using a team approach in applying data science to society’s greatest challenges makes him the ideal choice to be the head of our new School of Data Science and Society as we prepare to launch it this fall,” UNC leadership said.

 

Featured photo via UNC

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