USC Marshall School of Business

In an era when a mere swipe of a club card at the grocery store or a quick stock trade can generate a flood of data, the demand for experts who know how to navigate this deluge of information has never been stronger.

To meet this need, the USC Marshall School of Business has launched a new statistics program as part of the Information and Operations Management (IOM) track for Ph.D. students. It is the first statistics doctoral program at USC, and one of only a few programs offered at business schools nationwide.

"Over the last 10 to 20 years, changes in technology have resulted in enormous amounts of data that pose daunting challenges for businesses," said Professor Gareth James, IOM's Ph.D. coordinator, who was instrumental in developing the new program. James, a statistician who has made important contributions in the statistics field in the area of functional data analysis, also noted that business is not the only arena in which the study statistics is essential.

For instance, researchers in the biosciences need to comb through enormous amounts of data to decode the human genome and governments need to compute figures such as crime rates and employment numbers. For this reason, Marshall has opened courses in the new program to students from other disciplines at USC, including medicine, mathematics, engineering and social work.

"The new statistics Ph.D. program will have a broad impact in the USC community because of its interdisciplinary nature," said James G. Ellis, USC Marshall dean. "It enhances our reputation as a premier research institution and significantly augments Marshall's ability to conduct research in this increasingly relevant and vital field."

It is expected that graduates of the new program will pursue tenure-track faculty appointments at U.S. and international business schools. As faculty members at prominent academic institutions, Marshall's statistics graduates will take a leading role in training the next generation of students, many of whom will enter the private sector, analyzing data for research labs, technology companies or Wall Street firms. Others will remain in academia, where they will add long-term value to the international research community, according to James.

The new program started in fall 2010 and the IOM department plans to slowly expand the program. "We're aiming for a select group of students-perhaps two a year," said James.