Meharry Medical College is launching a new School of Applied Computational Sciences with the hopes of enrolling 55 graduate students in the fall.
The program was created to help increase the number of Black Americans receiving graduate degrees in computational sciences, which is the process of using math and computing to solve health and business problems using complex data.
Meharry will begin offering master’s degrees in August. Students will be trained to become data experts. The goal is to create a more equitable field in health and sciences.
Eliminating racial disparities in the medical field is a founding principal of the North Nashville historically Black medical college.
Fortune Mhlanga is the founding dean of the school and says data goes hand in hand with medical research. He says it’s good to have African Americans in the field to point out assumptions in medical software that favor white patients.
“Technologies have the same biases that we have,” he says. “It’s because they are built by humans.”
Meharry's super computer was installed today in School of Applied Computational Sciences. We can now tackle complex problems related to health using power of big data and extraordinary computational power. Kudos to Dean Mhlanga and team. pic.twitter.com/QQG6mT6vB7
— James E.K. Hildreth (@JamesEKHildreth) April 28, 2021
Mhlanga says just 3% of data scientists are Black. He also says African Americans represent the lowest percentage of students who are pursuing the profession.
It’ll cost students up to $44,000 to complete the master’s degree program, but Mhlanga says the school is working on providing scholarship and fellowship opportunities that will offset tuition.
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