Program: Engineering Data Science, Certificate - University of Houston

Apr 07, 2025

2022-2023 Graduate Catalog

Colleges > Cullen College of Engineering > Engineering Data Science, Certificate

Data science is all around us. Major examples are Google, Uber, Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, YouTube and a host of others. Virtually all aspects of contemporary life already are or soon will be affected by it: air and terrestrial transport, pattern detection and image analysis, personalized medicine, material testing, pollutant concentration and modeling, business intelligence, marketing and customer service, logistics, self-driving cars to name a few examples. Far from being a technology useful in restricted areas, data science offers tools that are impacting the entire structure of modern society.

World-wide many companies - large and small - have made major investments in data science and are hiring personnel with some degree of data science expertise at a clip. Many thousands of positions are open and many more will become available in the future. The job market is totally tilted in favor of sellers: there are not enough people with the required preparation and the few available easily change jobs to pursue a higher salary. In this exciting atmosphere, a certificate combining one of the engineering disciplines with basic data science tools and concepts is a winning springboard from which to launch an interesting and profitable career.

Admission Requirements

Who should apply?

Practicing engineers and recent Bachelor of Science in engineering graduates are qualified to apply, and so are students pursuing an MS or PhD degree at UH. The five-course curriculum combines foundational courses in data science with data-science-intensive engineering courses. Students will gain a solid, diverse base in data science and its applications to an engineering discipline. Courses are part of a graduate engineering program and are taught at the graduate level.

Student Qualifications

A four-year bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field is required.
The GRE exam is waived for Engineering Data Certificate applicants.
Applicants for admission to the Certificate program must meet the same admissions standards and requirements as other applicants for graduate study.
Students already pursuing an MS or PhD degree at the University of Houston will be enrolled in the Certificate program simply upon request.

Application Materials

An online application
Application Fee ($25.00 for domestic applicants/$75 for international applicants)
1 official transcript should be mailed to one of the following addresses below:

Regular Mail:

University of Houston

Graduate Admissions

P.O. Box 3947

Houston, TX 77253-3947

Express Mail:

University of Houston

Graduate Admissions

4302 University Drive, Room 102

Houston, TX 77204-2012

For further information on how to apply, please review the following website: How to Apply
Additional documentation for international applicants, including English language proficiency requirements, are found at: International Applicants

Degree Requirements

Credit hours required for this certificate: 15.0

The Certificate can be completed in two semesters.

In order to complete the Engineering Data Science Certificate, you will need to complete 5 graduate-level courses, 3 foundational for data science and 2 chosen, with the approval of the student’s advisor, from the data-science oriented courses offered by the various departments of the College of Engineering. The three data-science foundational courses are to be chosen from the lists of Group A and Group B below, with at least one course from each group.

Group A

MATH 6382 - Probability Credit Hours: 3 OR
MATH 6383 - Statistics Credit Hours: 3
MATH 6358 - Probability Models and Statistical Computing Credit Hours: 3.0
MATH 6380 - Programming Foundation for Data Analytics Credit Hours: 3.0

Group B

COSC 6335 - Data Mining Credit Hours: 3.0
COSC 6336 - Natural Language Processing Credit Hours: 3.0
COSC 6339 - Big Data Analytics Credit Hours: 3.0
COSC 6380 - Digital Image Processing Credit Hours: 3.0

Additional Courses

Additional courses deemed suitable by the Mathematics and Computer Science Departments may be added to each list once they have been approved.

A non-exhaustive list of data-science-oriented engineering courses is as follows:

BIOE 6305 - Brain Machine Interfacing Credit Hours: 3.0
BIOE 6309 - Neural Interfaces Credit Hours: 3
BIOE 6340 - Quantitative Systems Biology & Disease Credit Hours: 3.0
BIOE 6342 - Biomedical Signal Processing Credit Hours: 3.0
BIOE 6345 - Biomedical Informatics Credit Hours: 3.0
BIOE 6346 - Advanced Medical Imaging Credit Hours: 3.0
BIOE 6347 - Introduction to Optical Sensing and Biophotonics Credit Hours: 3.0
CHEE 6367 - Advanced Proc Control Credit Hours: 3.0
CIVE 6380 - Introduction to Geomatics and Geosensing Credit Hours: 3
CIVE 6382 - Lidar Systems and Applications Credit Hours: 3.0
CIVE 7336 - Finite Element Methods Credit Hours: 3
ECE 6326 - Power Systems Analysis Credit Hours: 3
ECE 6333 - Signal Detec & Est Thry Credit Hours: 3.0
ECE 6342 - Digital Signal Process Credit Hours: 3.0
ECE 6355 - Intro To Well-Logging Tech Credit Hours: 3.0
ECE 6376 - Digital Pattrn Recogntn Credit Hours: 3.0
ECE 6397 - Selected Topics Credit Hours: 3
Topic(s):
- GPU Programming
- Sparse Representations in Signal Processing
- High Performance Computing
INDE 6336 - Reliability Engineering Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 6363 - Statistical Process Control Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 6370 - Operation Research-Digital Simulation Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 6372 - Advanced Linear Optimization Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 7340 - Integer Programming Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 7342 - Nonlinear Optimization Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 7390 - Supply Chain Management Credit Hours: 3.0
INDE 7397 - Selected Topics Credit Hours: 3
Topic(s):
- Engineering Analytics
MECE 6397 - Selected Topics Credit Hours: 3
Topic(s):
- Data Analysis Methods
PETR 6322 - Practical Aspects of Integrated Petroleum Reservoir Management Credit Hours: 3.0
PETR 6397 - Selected Topics Credit Hours: 3
Topic(s):
- Big Data and Analytics for Petroleum Engineers
- Application of Data Analytics to Petroleum Engineering
SUBS 6397 - Selected Topics Credit Hours: 3
Topic(s):
- Guide to Engineering Data Science
- Real-Time Data Processing

Academic Policies

Students and prospective students should contact the student advisor in College of Engineering for guidance and to choose appropriate courses.

University of Houston Academic Policies

Each student assumes responsibility for being familiar with the academic program requirements as stated in the current catalogs of the college and university and this website.

A minimum grade point average of 3.00 over all graduate courses attempted is required for the successful completion of the Certificate.