Data Science & Business | Master's specialisation

Help businesses excel in data-driven decision making on an operational, tactical and strategic level.

With an overwhelming amount of information being generated every day, big data has conquered an indelible place in today’s business world. It’s proven to provide valuable insights for predicting consumer behaviour, identifying risks, optimising business processes, exploring trends, improving products and determining business strategies. So how do you turn big data into meaningful information for businesses? And how can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help to improve business processes? The specialisation in Data Science & Business will give you in-depth insights into the complexity of manipulating, analysing and using big data.

What to expect?

This specialisation will turn you into an expert in collecting, processing and analysing (big) data. You will come to grips with advanced process-mining and data-mining techniques in order to predict scenarios for businesses and optimising business processes. For example, can you identify upcoming trends in the stock market? Or how can you use real-time data stemming from sensors of trucks to coordinate logistic processes better? You will be perfectly prepared to perform business analyses using explorative and computational approaches appropriate to large amounts of data. In the end, it is about recognising the value of data and use this in decision-making processes, both on an operational, tactical and strategic level.

Examples of courses you (can) follow during this specialisation:

How can you design large scale storage for industrial, data-intensive applications like Gmail or Facebook? And how do you process large data streams of Twitter? You will learn this and more during the course Managing Big Data.
How do you make sure that an information system, for example of the Dutch Tax Authorities, does not become overloaded during peaks in usage? In the course Simulation, you will learn how to simulate business processes in order to measure and optimise the performance of information systems.
During the course Machine Learning, you will delve deeper into neural networks and use your understanding of e.g. deep learning and reinforcement learning to process large amounts of data quickly and thereby automating various business processes.

Moreover, this specialisation involves statistics, simulation techniques and machine learning. You will learn gain insights into Artificial Intelligence and learn how to apply this in business contexts (e.g. process automation, fraud detection, warehouse optimisation). Throughout the programme, you get to deal with many various (real-life) business cases. You will acquire a hands-on approach and enhance this with your in-depth scientific and technological insights in the field of data science and business.

What will you learn?

As a graduate of this Master's and this specialisation, you have acquired specific, scientific knowledge and skills and values, which you can put to good use in your future job.

Knowledge
After completing this Master’s specialisation, you:
- have insights in business innovation, including the interaction between IT innovations and innovations in business processes and organisations;
- understand the impact of the business strategies on both the effectiveness and the efficiency of IT;
- understand the fundamentals of digitally securing an organisation, and know how to apply the standards, frameworks and risk assessment techniques for managing and developing enterprise information security strategies and concerns.
Skills
After successfully finishing this Master’s specialisation, you:
- can apply methods and techniques for the integrated development of business processes and business information systems;
- can analyse and interpret large amounts of data to make business decisions;
- can apply the design cycle to complex IT and business problems.
Values
After completing this Master’s specialisation, you:
- have an investigative and reflective attitude and are capable of discussing and analysing ethical, social, cultural and societal aspects of problems, solutions and developments and their consequences in your field and for society;
- know the value of different disciplines and multi-disciplinary collaboration;
- know the importance of learning and are equipped to identify challenges, to acquire knowledge and insights and to take initiative and responsibility in your learning process as a professional.

Other master’s and specialisations

Is this specialisation not exactly what you’re looking for? Maybe the other specialisation suits you better. Or find out more about these other related Master’s:

Courses & research