News | Michigan Technological University

Environmental data science is the latest addition to Michigan Technological University undergraduate programs that teach students how to visualize, manage and understand data to find solutions for urgent global challenges. The potential power of environmental data science hit David Flaspohler, dean of Michigan Tech’s College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (CFRES), about four years ago during a conversation with his daughter. She was in the computer science Ph.D. program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doing research that involved predicting the location of deep-sea thermal vents. The vents lie hundreds of feet below the surface of the Gulf of California in complete darkness, where they support a unique ecosystem.