Dustin Mixon and Jim Fowler
Rapid advances in science and technology point to an exciting future for humanity, and the industries that harness these advances have an insatiable appetite for STEM PhDs. Historically, there has been an information gap between PhDs and industry jobs, as PhD students are surrounded by folks in academia, who in turn are most familiar with academic career trajectories. Today, this gap is being closed by the Erdős Institute.
The Erdős Institute is a multi-university organization committed to helping PhD students identify job opportunities in industry. Since its founding at the Ohio State Department of Mathematics in 2017, the Institute has hosted two core offerings for this purpose:
(1) During the academic year, the Institute hosts the Invitations to Industry (i2i) seminar series, in which industry professionals speak twice a week on their career trajectory, their company's mission and vision, and their day-to-day operations in that company. Monday talks in this series focus on applications of math and physical sciences, while Thursday talks focus on biology and life sciences.
(2) Every May, the Institute hosts the Data Science Boot Camp, where students encounter the machine learning principles needed to land an introductory position as a data scientist. For this event, industry partners submit datasets and corresponding research problems, which students then attempt to solve for an in-house competition.
The Erdős Institute found early success in its endeavor to match students with jobs. When the (i2i) seminar series was first piloted in the spring of 2017, it was limited to a series of three talks. Subsequently, all three speakers helped launch summer internships at their respective companies. For one student, the experience immediately converted into a job starting in the fall of 2017. The success of these summer internships led the Institute to launch the Data Science Boot Camp in 2018, and in both 2018 and 2019, every boot camp participant who was on the market landed a job.
In 2020, COVID-19 took a significant toll on the job market. In this environment, the Erdős Institute has played an increasingly important role, but it had to adapt its offerings with the pandemic. After canceling all in-person events, the Institute transitioned to a model in which partnering universities combine efforts to host remote events, and the results have been staggering. Interest in the virtual i2i seminar exploded with over 400 students participating from around the world. The Institute piloted a virtual version of the Data Science Boot Camp in the summer of 2020, and for the 2021 installment, the Institute received 350 student applications from 77 universities representing over 90 disciplines.
Associate Professor and Erdős Institute Managing Director Roman Holowinsky credits much of this growth to the quality programming offered by the Institute. Here are a few highlights of the current and emerging developments in this vein:
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Programming for the Data Science Boot Camp has been championed by Ohio State Math PhD alum Matt Osborne, who interacts with alumni peers to ensure that the curriculum is a good fit for academia and industry. This development cycle has led to exciting classes in specialized topics like natural language processing and sports analytics.
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For programming beyond the core machine learning competencies, the Institute launched Boot Camp+. Led by Ohio State Math PhD alum Kevin Nowland, Boot Camp+ offers information on other industry-oriented topics like productization, how to work in an agile framework, stakeholder engagement strategies, and how to work with standard computational platforms like AWS.
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In the fall of 2021, the Institute will be piloting a new Friday seminar series called Invitations to Entrepreneurship. Invited speakers will include PhDs who launched companies while in academia, members of startup culture and even experts in intellectual property law.
These exciting developments require additional support from both academia and industry in the forms of time, talent and treasure. Examples include speakers and datasets from industry, mentors for student projects during the Data Science Boot Camp and instructors for various programming.
For more information, visit the Institute's website at www.erdosinstitute.org or write at connect@erdosinstitute.org.
