North Carolina State University (NC State) was founded in 1887. Its flagship campus is in Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina. Serving about 36,000 students, NC State is a core institution of the University of North Carolina System, which integrates public universities in the state. In 2007, NC State became the first university in the United States to introduce a Master of Science in Analytics program. This program is a highly reputed, interdisciplinary initiative that helps students become professional data scientists, which are highly sought after in various businesses and industries.
Nagoya University signed an academic exchange agreement with NC State in 1985. The proximity of NC State and Technology Partnership of Nagoya University, Inc. (NU Tech), which is Nagoya University's unique global industry-academia collaboration hub founded in 2008, facilitates exchanges for international technology transfer. In 2021, the Graduate School of Informatics at Nagoya University signed the Virtual Lab Initiative (VLI) with the College of Engineering of NC State. The two universities are preparing an online exchange program of research and education, which allows students to receive advice about their research project from a member of the partner university.
The Institute for Advanced Analytics of NC State, which administers the above-mentioned Master of Science in Analytics program, supports the development and administration of a practical training program. This program was introduced at Nagoya University in 2019 to help its students become data scientists. Dr. Christopher John West, a practicum manager of NC State in charge of developing the practical data science program, gave a lecture entitled “a successful approach to industry-academia collaboration in the United States delivering results" during his visit to Nagoya University in 2019. In the lecture, he explained various examples of program success in producing data scientists with an emphasis on businesses and industries.
In the following video, Dr. Christopher West explains the practicum program, and gives his message to Nagoya Univ. students and business and industry leaders in Japan.
