A deal to buy data analytics and data management leader SAS, a privately held company with annual sales around $3 billion, could be valued as high as $15 billion to $20 billion.

Hardware and software infrastructure vendor Broadcom is in talks to acquire privately held business analytics and data management software giant SAS Institute in a deal potentially valued at $15 billion to $20 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

A deal could be reached in the next few weeks, according to the report, but is by no means assured.

An acquisition of SAS would the latest of several major acquisitions by Broadcom, a San Jose, Calif.-based semiconductor manufacturer that has moved in recent years to become a supplier of IT hardware and software infrastructure technology.

Broadcom acquired infrastructure software vendor CA Technologies in November 2018 for $18.9 billion and bought cybersecurity software developer Symantec Enterprise in November 2019 for $10.7 billion. Broadcom also bought network systems manufacturer Brocade Communications Systems in 2017 for $5.5 billion.

SAS, based in Cary, N.C., in the Research Triangle Park/Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the IT industries’ biggest developers of business analytics, AI and data management software.

SAS (SAS stands for Statistical Analysis System) grew out a data analysis software project at North Carolina State University where the company’s founders, including current CEO James Goodnight, were professors and students.

The company was founded in 1976 and has expanded into a broad product line of data analytics and data management offerings from its flagship SAS Viya visual analytics software, to data integration and governance tools, to Internet of Things analytics software, and business analytics applications for specific industries and tasks such as fraud detection and risk assessment in financial services.

The company’s founders have retained ownership of privately held SAS – Goodnight has a two-thirds stake in the company while co-founder and executive vice president John Sall owns one-third, according to a company fact page.

SAS doesn’t provide detailed financial data about its operations, although the company did issue an annual report earlier this year that disclosed that its revenue in 2020 was $3 billion.

SAS currently has 12,545 employees, according to the company’s website, with about 5,200 at its Cary headquarters.

A SAS spokesperson declined to comment on the WSJ report while Broadcom did not respond to a request for comment.

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Vanderbilt’s Data Science Institute has kicked off the third year of its undergraduate summer research program. The program engages students who are interested in carrying out data science-related research with a Vanderbilt faculty member and integrates them into the institute’s community of data science scholars.

This year, the DSI awarded fellowships to 24 undergraduate students with diverse academic backgrounds and research interests. New this summer is the addition of four partner sponsors from across campus to support a number of fellows. These partnerships allow students to work in labs affiliated with their sponsor on projects using data science techniques while simultaneously taking advantage of workshops, demo sessions and curated feedback from the DSI team.

The partner sponsors are as follows:

• Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative
• Evolutionary Studies Initiative at Vanderbilt
• Vanderbilt Brain Institute
• Frist Center for Autism and Innovation

The undergraduate fellows will engage in 10 weeks of research with their faculty mentor and enhance their data science skills through online workshops led by the data science team with a goal of becoming articulate leaders through weekly demonstrations.

The 2021 fellows come from a wide range of schools, departments and majors across campus, including anthropology, cognitive studies, physics, computer science, neuroscience, psychology, political science, economics, and medicine, health and society.

Learn more about the 2021 fellows.

2021 Fellows

• Katharine Cella
• Zoe Crawley
• Dillon Davey
• Andrew Gothard
• Jiaxin He
• Miya Hugaboom
• Chetan Immanneni
• Qiaochu Jiang
• Rohit Khurana
• Hangling Liu
• Suiyang Mai
• Jessica Mo
• Amy Rieth
• Joseph Sexton
• Elijah Sheridan
• Janet Stefanov
• Benjamin Van Sleen
• Chet Weissberg
• Aidan Wells
• Qinlian Yang
• Yuqin Yang
• Xinxin Zhang
• Qianhui Zheng
• Zheyu Zhu

Director of Undergraduate Research Thomas Palmeri, Chief Data Scientist Jesse Spencer-Smith and Assistant Director Amanda Harding lead the DSI-SRP.

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Students looking to find a career in what Harvard Business Review describes as “the sexiest job of the 21^st century” are in luck.

UMKC is launching a new data science program to propel students further into data education with workshops designed to provide hands on research experience in the field.

The Institute for Data Education, Analytics and Science (IDEAS) was created by Chancellor Mauli Agrawal, who saw potential for UMKC to take a lead position for data science education in Missouri.

“I realized UMKC had enormous capabilities and opportunities in data science,” said Agrawal. “There are exciting possibilities here for us.”

The interdisciplinary program is coordinated by Associate Professor of Public Affairs Brent Never, who described the program as having three main “buckets” of activity: teaching, research, and community engagement.

“In the area of teaching, we have a series of non-credit workshops,” Never said. “These are day-long sessions with leaders in this area.”

The workshops would be open to all UMKC students who have an interest in learning basic data skills and getting hands on experience in data science. IDEAS would also partner with other UMKC schools and departments to offer for-credit options in the field of data science and analytics.

On the research side, IDEAS would add what Never’s describes as “a gathering place for scholars to create interdisciplinary teams.”  

According to a blog post post from UMKC administration, the program would allow researchers to quickly capitalize on “promising opportunities.”

Never also spoke about the potential for community engagement the program could have. 

UMKC is seeking to partner with regional businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations to help provide solutions using data. Never suggested the workshop series would be open to the public as well.

Data science is a relatively new field of study. However, data skills are continually in demand in the modern market. 

“Big data is a significant part of decision making in a modern business environment,” business management sophomore Elliott Voelkel said. “It’s best for the university to continue supporting student exposure to data science.”

In an era where fake news is rampant, data education also plays an important role in creating critical media consumers. 

“[Data] can easily be skewed to seem legitimate and without bias,” said freshman computer science major Justice Keen. “That’s why it’s extremely valuable for the average person to know how to question data.”

Whether it’s creating a pathway to gain marketable skills or educating the public on critical data viewing, UMKC students agree IDEAS is a pretty good idea.

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You see them all over city streets: pedestrians wearing headphones or earbuds – their faces glued to their phones as they stroll along oblivious to their surroundings.

Known as “twalking,” the behavior is not without its dangers. Headphone-wearing pedestrians often can’t hear the auditory cues – horns, shouts, or the sound of approaching cars – that signal imminent harm. As a result, the number of injuries and deaths caused by twalking in the U.S. has tripled in the last seven years. Last year, moreover, pedestrian deaths in the U.S. were at their highest level since 1990.

To counter this growing public safety concern, researchers at the Data Science Institute, Columbia, are designing an intelligent headphone system that warns pedestrians of imminent dangers. The headphones have miniature microphones and intelligent signal processing that detects sounds of approaching vehicles. If a hazard appears near, the system sends an audio alert to the pedestrian’s headphones. The research team is developing prototypes and testing them on streets close to Columbia. Once developed, the intelligent wearable system could help reduce pedestrian injuries and fatalities.

“We are exploring a new area in developing an inexpensive and low-power technology that creates an audio-alert mechanism for pedestrians,” says Fred Jiang, a Data Science Institute member and an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Columbia Engineering.

The smart-headphone project was awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation in 2017, and the team has since published two conference papers as well as a journal paper in IEEE Internet of Things Journal on their research. They’ve also received several honors including a best demo award from an ACM conference and a best presentation award from an IEEE conference. The research team includes Peter Kinget, chair of the Electrical Engineering Department at Columbia and an affiliate of the Data Science Institute; Shahriar Nirjon, a professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Joshua New, a psychology professor from Barnard College. Graduate students from both Columbia and UNC also work on the project.

The research and development of the smart headphones is complex: It involves embedding multiple miniature microphones in the headset as well as developing a low-power data pipeline to process all the sounds near to the pedestrian. It must also extract the correct cues that signal impending danger. The pipeline will contain an ultra-low power, custom-integrated circuit that extracts the relevant features from the sounds while using little battery power.

The researchers are also using the most advanced data science techniques to design the smart headset. Machine-learning models on the user’s smartphone will classify hundreds of acoustical cues from city streets and nearby vehicles and warn users when they are in danger. The mechanism will be designed so that people will recognize the alert and respond quickly. The team is now testing its design both in the lab and on the streets of New York – a city known for its congestion and its cacophony of sounds. New, the psychology professor from Barnard, says he’ll conduct perceptual and behavioral experiments with people to see how the alerts can be effectively provided to pedestrians who walk in cities wearing headphones.

Jiang said his aim is to develop a prototype of the smart headphone system at Columbia and then transfer the technology to a commercial company.

“We hope that once refined,” he says, “the technology will be commercialized and mass produced in a way that will help cities reduce pedestrian fatalities.”

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The University of Virginia has received state clearance for its data science school.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia last week gave final approval to the creation of UVA’s School of Data Science, eight months after the Charlottesville university received a $120 million donation for the creation for the school.

“I am delighted that the School of Data Science has cleared its final hurdle and can officially move forward,” said UVA President Jim Ryan in a statement. “I want to thank the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for sharing our excitement in this proposal, and Phil Bourne and his team at the Data Science Institute for their hard work.”

The university announced in January plans to open a School of Data Science in what will be UVA’s first new school since 2007 and its 12th in total. The majority of the funding is coming from a $120 million donation from the Charlottesville-based Quantitative Foundation, the largest private gift in UVA history.

“This is a historic moment for the University of Virginia and for the field of data science,” said Provost Elizabeth Magill. “The school is coming online at a time when the amount of available data in the world is more than doubling every two years, and there is soaring demand for qualified data scientists who can analyze and interpret vast amounts of data.”

Magill added: “A new school will catalyze research on daunting societal challenges and point the way toward their solutions. It will also allow us to prepare students to become responsible and creative leaders who are capable of using data science in a wide range of fields.”

Data Science Institute Director Philip E. Bourne has been appointed dean of the school.

UVA said in January that it plans for the new school to have a Ph.D. program, undergraduate programs in data science and data science certificates. The university also plans to expand its existing on-campus and online master’s program in data science.

“We envision the new School of Data Science at UVA as a ‘school without walls,’” Bourne said. “In its very structure and foundation, we will build collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities through partnerships and physical spaces for shared research and education programs. The new school will combine a focus on research, education and service to build bridges across academic, geographic, commercial and cultural boundaries using responsible, open data science.”

The university will celebrate the official launch of the school at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Dell 1 building on Central Grounds.

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