Ohio’s three C’s — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati — have opportunities for data scientists. Keep reading for a look at research initiatives, scholarships, professional communities and job prospects for data scientists in the Buckeye State.

Or, you can skip to programs and view our list of Ohio’s data science degrees.

According to CompTIA’s interactive tool, Ohio has 4.6% of its workforce in the tech industry – putting it at 28th of all states in 2022. There are many initiatives going on in the realm of big data at the state’s universities.

Here are some ways Ohio is using data to solve public and private sector challenges:

Online data science education in Ohio is limited, with just a handful of public and private institutions jumping into the game at the graduate level.

There are a couple of distance learning degrees in Ohio, including the following. Cleveland State University’s Data-Driven Decision Making certificate is a blended program designed for school administrators or data specialists focusing on K-12 education. Just down the road, Kent State University’s Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics is a six-course program of study centered on management processes.

The online MBA at Ohio University features a Business Analytics concentration. University of Cincinnati’s MS in Health Informatics Is built to be relevant for both health workers (such as nurses) without IT experience and IT professionals who haven’t worked in healthcare. Xavier University’s MS in Health Economic and Clinical Outcomes Research (HECOR) is similar but expects enrollees to already be familiar with statistics…because it’s going to get intense. Last, aspiring managers can take Kent State’s MS in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management (with a concentration in Health Informatics).

A bootcamp is a short, intensive educational program intended to quickly orient students to working in a new field. Data science and data analytics bootcamps in Ohio can help newcomers get to work sooner. While some bootcamps in Ohio focus solely on data science, the study of how knowledge is gleaned from raw information, or on data analytics, the specific processes by which insights can be drawn from information, other bootcamps combine the study of both data science and data analytics. See our guides to learn more about data science bootcamps or data analytics bootcamps in Ohio.

If you’re an on-campus graduate student, one of the first things you may want to ask about is assistantships, which allow students to pay for their degree and living expenses in exchange for time spent teaching, conducting research, or doing other department work. Online students, meanwhile, do not typically have such opportunities and should look for college or department scholarships. We’ve rounded up a few awards for aspiring data scientists at Ohio’s universities:

The Buckeye State has many Meetups for prospective and practicing data scientists, many of them focused on individual tools. R users can find a community of peers at the Greater Cleveland R Group or at the female-only R-Ladies Columbus. Hadoop users have options in Columbus Cleveland. And even TIBCO and Azure Machine Learning users get in on the action in Columbus.

At the other end of the spectrum are groups geared toward generalists. Since there are so many in the state, we’ve sifted through the competitors to find the most active from each corner of Ohio:

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Meetup.com links to plenty of other active groups, with the greatest concentration found in the capital.

It’s not that there’s a lack of events for data scientists in Ohio. It’s just that they are held so irregularly. A new event may pop up on the radar for a year but never return. In 2016, for instance, OSU hosted the Topology, Geometry, and Data Analysis Conference, but gave no indication if it will be a regular event.

Here are a few small events that may run year to year in the state:

Let’s take a tour of Ohio, stopping off in its major cities. In the southwest corner of the state, Cincinnati looks out upon the Ohio River. The University of Cincinnati is closely involved with big data, and the city government created an Office of Performance & Data Analytics back in 2014, which has encouraged local tech companies to grow roots in the state. They include InfoTrust (data services for marketers), Astronomer (data platform providers), and Rocklogic.io (cloud consulting).

Moving northeast along Interstate 71, you’ll hit Columbus in the center of the state. The capital has its own data scene. For starters, OSU employs a number of faculty working in data science. But research is also coming out of the Columbus Collaboratory, a consortium of big name companies working in big data.

Get back on the interstate for one last stop, this time in Cleveland, on the shores of Lake Erie. The state’s largest city is home to Explorys, which you’ve probably never heard of. But you’ve likely heard of IBM’s Watson supercomputer. Watson uses Explorys’ data mining capabilities and access to millions of healthcare records to suggest treatment plans for doctors. Other major players in the big data market include Fortune 500 company Progressive Insurance, which is headquartered in Cleveland.

According to data from the O*NET OnLine in 2020, data scientists made an average $80,680 per year in Ohio.

Last updated: April 2022

If you’re looking for information on career paths that involve STEM, see our guides below:

Data Science and Analytics Careers:

Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Careers:

Marketing and User Research Careers:

Compare Careers and STEM Fields:

We found 9 universities in Ohio offering Masters of Data Science programs (and/or closely related programs, like MS in Analytics / Masters in Business Analytics). The university’s website will have the most up to date information on specific programs.

If you represent a university and would like to contact us about editing any of our listings, or adding new programs, please send an email to info@mastersindatascience.org.

This page includes information from O*NET OnLine by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.