American Family Insurance is investing $20 million in the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help the school expand its data science offerings.
As part of the deal, $10 million will go to data science research over the next 10 years, while the other $10 million will fund an endowment to give UW-Madison the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute.
The new institute, which will be located in the McArdle Building, will be led by interim director Brian Yandell, a UW-Madison professor of biometry, statistics and horticulture. The college says the work done in the new space could help push forward studies in fields like artificial intelligence, genetics, drug development, material science and business.
“Creating the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute will bring faculty together from across campus to collaborate on cutting-edge research, spark new opportunities for our students, and give us new ways to work with industry partners,” said UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank in a statement. “It will advance discoveries in sectors vital to the Wisconsin economy and make sure our university remains a leader in this important area of research.”
The new institute builds on work and programs UW-Madison has already established, including the formation of the Data Science Hub at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the creation of a data science major that is expected to attract close to 1,000 undergraduates over the next five years, and the work of the Institute for Foundations of Data Science, an interdisciplinary research effort supported by the National Science Foundation.
“Like many other academic institutions, we are grappling with how to address the challenges of a rapidly evolving data landscape,” said Norman Drinkwater, the interim vice chancellor for research and graduate education, in a statement. “Given the strength of our faculty in both fundamental and applied data science, we are in a good position to develop an interdisciplinary institute focused on data science and we are grateful to American Family Insurance for their continuing partnership in this research area.”
Besides UW-Madison, AmFam has also been investing in the Milwaukee area, scouting sites for a local downtown office to employ software engineers and data scientists.
