Phil Bourne

Phil Bourne is a scientist in the truest and most all-encompassing use of the word. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry, shifted his research emphasis to biology, then would later focus on computational science. This was all before he would ultimately become the first dean of the first school for data science in the country. 

He made his mark early in his career by developing a protein databank, which is used by approximately 200,000 scientists each month, including in the discovery of new drugs. As a result, he is one of the 10 most-cited scholars at UVA, according to Google Scholar.

“It really had a profound impact on science in general,” Bourne said. 

He also worked on developing algorithms that could assist in comparing protein structures, research that helped get more products to market. Underlying much of this work is an emphasis on science that serves society — a principle that now guides his leadership of the School of Data Science. 

After a lengthy career in private industry, research, and academia, including at the University of California San Diego, Bourne entered government service, becoming the first associate director for data science at the National Institutes of Health in 2014.

“It was certainly beyond the midlife crisis,” he joked. “This was more toward the late life crisis, and I decided I just wanted to do something different.”

Early in his tenure, he approached NIH Director Francis Collins about what he should focus on. He responded that he wanted Bourne to use data and methods to unify the many siloed NIH institutes and centers.

“This is clearly a huge undertaking to move a big ship like that, but it certainly paid off for the kinds of things that I did when I came here,” Bourne said. 

With Don Brown shifting to a more research-focused role with the Data Science Institute in 2017, there was an opening to become the next director. 

“I didn’t know much about UVA generally,” Bourne said, though he did recall during a past visit thinking that Charlottesville and the community were “really a hidden gem.”

Ultimately, it was the people at UVA he met and the awarding of degrees that provided sustainability for the Data Science Institute that convinced him that this was a leap worth taking, he said. 

Arlyn Burgess vividly recalls her thoughts about the future of the institute early in the process to find Brown’s successor.

“I’m going to need to get a new job because there’s just no way that this thing is going to move forward,’” she recalls thinking.

But then she met Bourne, who requested a separate meeting just with her after his interviews to get a better sense of how things worked. 

“His openness and transparency from the beginning was awesome,” Burgess said. “And I knew at that point, if we could get him here, that he was going to be able to work with us to bring it to the next level.”

Burgess remembered Bourne coming to a banquet to celebrate the new class of master’s graduates and telling her that he felt a bit like a stranger in someone else’s house. However, while he may not yet feel a part of it, he said that he could see the family atmosphere that was there, which was energizing and encouraging for what the future would hold.

“It’s one of the things that has always been exciting to me is that it kind of was a family affair,” said Burgess. “We were all in — we were lean, and we were mean, and we were moving fast.”

Bourne would take over as director of the Data Science Institute in May 2017; he was also named the Stephenson Chair of Data Science as well as a professor of biomedical engineering.

“I had no intent to come here and develop a school and be a dean,” he said. “I came here, really, to run a small institute and do my own research.”

His plans would soon change.

While the master’s program continued to attract a considerable number of applicants, it required students to study in residence at UVA.  

This was certainly an appealing aspect to many, but for others, this simply wasn’t feasible for any number of reasons. Some were not in a position to move to Charlottesville. Others couldn’t leave their jobs for a year.  

Cathy Anderson had collaborated with Don Brown and Arlyn Burgess during the early days of the Data Science Institute to deliver custom executive education programs while she was at UVA’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

A couple of years later, in January 2017, Anderson joined the Data Science Institute team as the Director of Executive and Continuing Education, with the mission of expanding the Institute’s offerings to new audiences.  

“Don had been interested in venturing into the online space for a while,” Anderson said. “And that’s, of course, most of what the School of Continuing and Professional Studies did, so I looked forward to applying my experience at the Institute.”  

Anderson was excited for the opportunity to expand data science education to new markets of students, and soon, attention turned to the idea of creating an entirely online master’s program.

The Data Science Institute, though, was still a lean operation, and establishing an online degree program would require extensive work, including marketing and student recruitment.

Anderson and others realized they would need an outside vendor to turn their vision into a reality and enlisted Noodle Partners, a firm that specializes in assisting universities with these very needs.

Beyond promoting the program, the institute, which did not have its own faculty, had to earn buy-in from other departments, many of whom, Anderson noted, were “very stretched” in terms of resources.  

“There was a lot of going around and meeting with people, talking about what we were hoping to do, and listening to their concerns” she said.  

With the provost’s office fully supportive, the online data science master’s degree was announced in fall 2018, with the program launching the following summer, one of the first of its kind at UVA.

Given the unique challenges that students in the online program would face, courses had to be designed to accommodate the needs of students and the extraordinary time demands that many faced.  

“They need to really know what to expect for planning purposes because many juggle full-time jobs and families,” Anderson said when it came to assignments, tests, and due dates. She also noted that faculty members would record lessons and other content, which allowed students to view them when their schedules permitted.  

While this required many instructors to adjust their teaching styles, the payoff was considerable, as data science education at UVA would now be accessible to a much wider pool of talented and passionate students, many of whom would no longer have to take a year off from work or uproot their families to pursue their goals.

“She never gave up,” Brown said of Anderson. “And sure enough, we got the program.”

“Everyone felt really good about this new student population and being able to serve them,” said Anderson. “They’re just so thankful that they have the opportunity.”

That’s true, Bourne added, “but there were moments when we were stretched so thin. I feared we would not be able to deliver classes.”

Indeed, while the expansion of programs and the ambition of the work of the Data Science Institute — and later the School of Data Science —brought success, it did not come without a cost. Resource limitations amid increasing responsibilities would continue to loom large and weigh on the team as the years went on and ambitions expanded.

When the Data Science Institute was launched, there were 11 schools at UVA. The newest was the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, which formed in 2007. Before that, a new school hadn’t been created at the University since the 1950s. 

Jaffray Woodriff had long wanted to see his alma mater be a national leader and pioneer in data science by creating a school dedicated to it. He previously donated $10 million toward realizing that vision, which helped launch the Data Science Institute in 2013. In the years that followed, he decided it was time for something bigger.

“I got more and more excited about the possibility of making a much larger contribution,” Woodriff said. “I could start to see that my idea of starting a school was being taken seriously.” 

Ultimately, the Quantitative Foundation, founded by Jaffray Woodriff and Merrill Woodriff, would pledge $120 million, the largest private donation in UVA history, to create a School of Data Science at UVA, the first in the country. 

While the historic donation from Woodriff unlocked the possibility of a school for data science, more work remained to turn it into a reality — in part because little information existed on how to move forward.

“The University doesn’t really have that much in the way of bylaws or guidance about how you form a school,” said Teresa Sullivan.

“We were kind of making it up as we went along,” she added. 

With Sullivan’s term set to end on Aug. 1, 2018, they would also need the support of a new University president. 

Jim Ryan would take over that month. While new to the role, becoming UVA’s president was a homecoming of sorts. 

After graduating first in his class from the University’s School of Law, Ryan clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He then worked as a public interest lawyer in Newark, New Jersey, before coming back to UVA to join the Law School’s faculty, where he served for 15 years, including as academic associate dean from 2005-09. 

He would eventually be tapped as dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, holding that position from 2013-18, then returned to Grounds again — this time as UVA’s ninth president. 

Ryan remembered his initial reaction when he first learned about the possibility of a school for data science at the university he was now poised to lead. 

“I will confess, I was a little skeptical,” he said. 

More specifically, he said: “I wanted to understand the benefit of having a school as opposed to having an institute.” The key figures behind the idea made a convincing case.

“I talked to Terry Sullivan a fair bit,” Ryan recalled. “And she was persuaded, as I ultimately was, that this was an important enough field that having a school dedicated to it made a lot of sense.”

He also spoke with Woodriff and Phil Bourne. 

“Jaffray made the point that this will never get the attention it deserves, either internally, among students and faculty, or externally, unless there’s a seat at the table for data science — meaning, that there is an independent school and that there’s a dean of this school,” Ryan said. “And he was right.”

Meantime, Bourne sold Ryan on a vision for the new school, one that wouldn’t be siloed off from the rest of the University.

“Once I started thinking about it that way, it became incredibly exciting to me,” Ryan said. 

“It was a different way of creating a school and a different way of interacting,” he explained. “And that’s what ultimately convinced me that this was the right way to go.”

The new president was on board, but considerable work remained to turn this vision into a reality. 

Phil Bourne estimates that he and his team spent about a year on outreach and making the case for a new school devoted to data science. 

He remembers one meeting that included the deans from throughout the University, as well as Teresa Sullivan, who was still president at the time. 

“There was quite a lot of tussling,” Bourne said of the discussions among the 11 other school leaders, with some arguing that there wasn’t a need for a new school and that data science could be carried out in existing ones.

One thing that advocates for a new school had going for them was the track record of success that the Data Science Institute had demonstrated over the previous five years.

“I think people recognized its promise,” Sullivan said of data science and its potential to address new challenges. 

From a practical standpoint, she also noted that the University had adopted a new budget model, one that helped ensure existing departments and schools would be properly credited for courses that were offered. She believed the transparency and clarity of this model may have helped mitigate some concerns about the potential resource impact of a new school. 

Melody Bianchetto, vice president for finance, led the effort to draft a budget proposal for the impact and opportunities that such a school would provide.

Bourne said their efforts pitching the concept of the school helped sharpen its philosophy. 

“It was in those discussions that really the notion of a school without walls came up,” he said. The mission of a new school for data science would not be to compete with other schools, Bourne explained, but to work with them and thereby elevate UVA.

Don Brown said that a key argument for their proposal was the vast potential of the field itself.

“This was an area that was so transformative,” he said of data science, adding that “if we didn’t do it as a school, we wouldn’t really be able to address some of those major transformations.”

By the end of 2018, all 11 deans were supportive. Unfortunately, that information had not trickled down, which Bourne and others realized shortly before a public announcement.

So, the team laid out their plan to the executive council of the Faculty Senate, who, Bourne said, “were completely blindsided.” Then, at the full Faculty Senate, Bourne said their proposal elicited “some pretty visceral reactions,” with professors asking what this might mean for revenue and student recruitment at their schools. 

The reaction was compounded by the suggestion that the School might not award tenure. “While I remain in two minds about the value of tenure, it was clearly a huge sticking point,” said Bourne. “I remember Jim Ryan going to the back of the room to get me a glass of water as I tried to defend the case. He came back and said, ‘I think you will need to rethink this.’” 

Bourne did rethink it, and in retrospect, it is what the School's own faculty expect. Reinventing higher education can only go so far.

A manifesto would ultimately be drafted by Bourne as a response to Faculty Senate concerns with input from the team laying out exactly what a school for data science would do and why it was needed. 

On Jan. 18, 2019, the stage was set to publicly unveil what had been unfolding for months. At a ceremony at UVA’s Rotunda Dome Room, the grant provided by the Woodriffs’ Quantitative Foundation was announced. 

At the event, Ryan, who took over as president just a few months earlier, said the school that would be created would be “one driven by the discovery of new knowledge and a commitment to the public good.” 

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam called it “a momentous day for the University of Virginia and for the commonwealth.”
With the gift now public, efforts accelerated to secure final approval for UVA’s 12th school. 

In May, the Faculty Senate, despite some initial misgivings, voted unanimously to support its creation. The next month, UVA’s Board of Visitors also voted unanimously to approve the plan. 

Finally, at their Sept. 17 meeting, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia made it official, approving a resolution creating the School of Data Science that would “be responsible for the leadership, management, and advocacy of data science education and research.” 

It was the culmination of an improbable series of developments that began just a decade earlier, with Rick Horwitz, Don Brown, and others pitching the idea of interdisciplinary work around big data sets; Jaffray Woodriff’s dream of UVA becoming the pioneering national university for the study of data science; and the hiring of Phil Bourne to make it a reality. A School Without Walls, one that would embody not only the promise of a new field but also the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, had at last arrived. 

Arlyn Burgess recounted the January 2019 announcement event and speaking to Woodriff at the lunch that followed. 

“I joked with him, and I said, ‘Hey, Jaffray, a school of data science — who would have thought?’” Burgess recalled. “He smiled, and he said, ‘Well, I did.’”