The Master’s in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (MDSAI) program recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.
Founded in the tumultuous early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the MDSAI program has grown into a thriving graduate program recognized as the #2 program in its field for all of Canada.
“The development of the program in its first five years has been impressive, thanks to hard work by many people,” say Yuying Li and Tamer Ozsu, co-directors of the MDSAI program. “We now have a stable program with its unique characteristics of balancing fundamentals with applications. As we look to the future, there are initiatives that are planned to build on the sound foundation that has been established, such as introducing specializations focusing on application areas.”
Yuying Li and Tamer Özsu
On March 21, 2025, sixty-five attendees including program faculty, students, alumni, and industry partners gathered to celebrate this important milestone. They shared memories from the last five years, networked, and discussed the program’s creation as well as visions for its future.
Danish Farid, an alum of the program and current software engineer at Huawei, was one of the speakers at the event. “Reconnecting with alumni and faculty from the MDSAI program served as an excellent reminder as to why the program continues to thrive,” says Farid. “The varied backgrounds of the students, broad expertise of the faculty and excellent structure of the program itself are what make MDSAI unique and an important milestone in my career. It was a pleasure to see students now from five cohorts excelling in the world. I have no doubt we’ll soon be celebrating ten years of the program as it continues to go from strength to strength!”
Danish Farid, an alum of the program, spoke to the audience about his experience
“Our MDSAI program is training a generation of leaders and innovators in the transformative fields of data science and AI,” says Mark Giesbrecht, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics. “It provides a hyper-current education in these fast-moving areas, alongside vital on-the-job skills. Whatever the next five years bring, I know that our students and program leaders will be up for the challenge.”
To learn more about the MDSAI, visit their website.