WEST LAFAYETTE — Strengthening computer science through a 27 percent increase in undergraduate and graduate student enrollment capacity and additional support for strategic research programs is part of a series of initiatives at Purdue University.

Sunil Prabhakar, a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science, highlighted the increasing demand across all industries and sectors for graduates with the ability to analyze and work with very large sets of data.

“We have entered an age of big data, where every day massive amounts of digital data are produced that could provide valuable insights for science, agriculture, business and government,” he said. “Without more computer scientists and greater advances in the tools we use to derive meaning from these massive data sets, economic development and research will slow dramatically. Purdue's computer science program is the oldest in the nation and this is yet another opportunity for it to serve as a national model as we prepare more students to design and use technology that will inform policy and drive decision making on the local, national and global levels.”