New building

For those who walk the halls of the state-of-the-art new facility for the School of Data Science in the years to come, it might come as a surprise to learn just how humble its beginnings were. 

There was Olsson Hall and the red shed of Dell Building One during the Data Science Institute years. There was the Elson Building, formerly the student health center, a building that retained many of the trappings of a medical facility and was home to many faculty and staff during the early years of the School.

Classes were held, the School expanded, and research continued, but the limitations in proximity and space weren’t always conducive to the sort of collaborative spirit the School was founded on. Fortunately, this was only a temporary arrangement. 

Thanks to the donation from Jaffray Woodriff, a new home for the School of Data Science would be built as part of the University’s expansion at Charlottesville’s Emmet-Ivy Corridor, which would also include the new Karsh Institute of Democracy.

Groundbreaking took place in October 2021. And just like the school that would occupy it, this would be no ordinary building.  

“We had three design principles,” said Arlyn Burgess, who has led efforts pertaining to the new building’s construction from day one. “They were wellness, sustainability, and utilization.” 

Burgess explained that the School wanted to create a safe, healthy, eco-friendly environment where faculty and staff both desired to work and could do their best work.

Beyond the design, Burgess and Phil Bourne wanted the building to embody the discipline that would be practiced there and the principles that had guided the School’s founding — literally and figuratively a School Without Walls.

“There was a feeling that when you walk into the building it should be a physical manifestation of what it is we believe data science to be,” said Burgess. 

This meant the building would include exposed steel, open hallways, a large atrium, a corporate commons for discussions with the private sector, and monumental stairs, among other features — all aimed at fostering interaction, openness, and collaboration. 

“I think we designed a school to maximize all of those things,” said Bourne. 

There will even be a data sculpture. After a lot of brainstorming, and many designs, school officials arrived at something that, in Burgess’ words, “is really quite simplistic in that it is literally bringing raw data up through the building in an architectural scale.” A variety of data sets, she explained, will be deployed, which could tell any number of stories. 

The idea is that this will be an interactive experience, Burgess said, with the user experience depending on the perspective from which you are viewing the sculpture. 

“We thought that there was something really powerful about that, that you experienced the data through your own lens,” she said.

The School also sponsored an art competition in conjunction with the new building’s opening. The contest, called Data is ART and centered around the theme of “Our World,” invited submissions from all formats and mediums, with the chosen art submissions from finalists set to be displayed at the building.

The new home of the School of Data Science, the School Without Walls, held its public opening in late April 2024, with faculty and staff moving in the following month. 

With the grand opening of its new building in April 2024, and faculty and staff moved in by that summer, the School of Data Science began a new era heading into the 2024-25 academic year. 

“We had a physical presence. I can’t overemphasize how important that was to the establishment of the School,” Dean Phil Bourne said in late 2025. 

Along with its new space came new academic milestones, including the first graduates from the School’s doctoral program being hooded in May 2024: Kevin Lin, Saurav Sengupta, and Jiahao Tian.

“Because of the research and writing of Jiahao, of Saurav, of Kevin, someone, somewhere, sometime in the future will collect and analyze data, and they will do it differently because of the work of these students,” said professor Thomas Stewart, director of the Ph.D. program, at the diploma ceremony that spring.

Meanwhile, the master’s program, which had been a cornerstone of data science education at UVA for the preceding decade, was set to be retooled for the evolving times. The changes, announced in fall of 2024 for students matriculating the following year, included adjustments to modernize coursework and a move in the program’s start term from summer to fall.

“You can only do so much by changing the content in the classes to keep things up to date," said Jeffrey Blume, quantitative foundation associate dean for academic and faculty affairs in data science. "You’re still limited by the structure with which you originally organized the program, and that’s what we found we needed to change.”

The School also announced in fall 2024 the creation of a new genomics focus, available to students beginning in 2025, as part of the residential master’s program, thanks to an award from the National Institutes of Health. 

Capping off a year marked by expansion and evolution was the announcement in December that Jaffray Woodriff and the Quantitative Foundation were making another sizable donation to UVA to support data science, this time for the construction of an additional building for the School.

“The second building is going to be much more intense with respect to research,” Bourne said. “It’s the next phase of data science,” he added. 

In addition to its support of interdisciplinary research, long the beating heart of data science at UVA, the new building will aim to foster entrepreneurial efforts, with the goal of serving not only School of Data Science students but the broader University and community.

“I think that's part of this notion of the future of higher education, at least in my mind, where there are going to be startups, there are going to be entrepreneurs in residence,” Bourne said.

In March 2026, UVA’s Board of Visitors granted initial approval for design of the project, with the new five-story building being connected to the current data science home by an upper-level bridge. 

Throughout 2024, the School of Data Science personnel ranks also continued to grow, with three new faculty — Chirag Agarwal, Mai Dahshan, and Nur Yildirim — joining in August and 11 staff members hired across the year. In 2025, the School hired nine new faculty and a dozen more staff to join the growing team.

As he saw the School grow from fewer than 30 employees in its early days to well over 100, Bourne reflected on what impact this could have on the workings and ethos of the School.

This expansion, Bourne said, had both increased research possibilities and eased burdens on previously stretched faculty and staff.

“The emphasis on research is getting even greater as our programs settle in. … The way we started was to actually hire faculty who could teach to fill the educational programs. We now have a bench,” he said, adding that in addition to teaching capabilities, the School was able to focus on the research directions prospective faculty hires would take.

Noting that most professors and employees gravitated to the School of Data Science because of its innovative spirit, Bourne said he wasn’t concerned that the School’s continued growth would compromise its guiding principles of openness, transparency, and interdisciplinarity.

“There is this notion, of course, that as you get bigger, you become more traditional, you fall into old ways. But I think there's a lot of enthusiasm in the School for not doing that. I remain pretty encouraged about where we're headed,” he said.

Phil Bourne’s leadership of the School of Data Science, and indeed an animating trait of his career, was an unyielding focus on what’s possible. 

It would lead him to develop a protein databank that garnered him international scientific renown, with his overall body of work earning more than 100,000 citations, placing him among the most-cited researchers in UVA history; to success in private industry and academia, including many years spent at the University of California San Diego; to the halls of government where he, in 2014, became the first associate director for data science at the National Institutes of Health. Ultimately, Bourne’s leadership would lead him to UVA, first as director of the Data Science Institute, and then as the founding dean at the first-ever School of Data Science.

“One of the most amazing things about Phil, to me, is when everybody else is thinking about what’s happening today, what’s happening tomorrow, what’s happening next month, he’s always thinking about what’s happening 10 years from now,” said Arlyn Burgess, associate dean for administration at the School of Data Science. Burgess, the first employee of the then Data Science Institute, worked closely with Bourne since his arrival in Charlottesville in 2017.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Bourne conceived and helped spearhead the development of UVA’s Futures Initiative, aimed at positioning the University to proactively respond to rapidly evolving external events over the next decade, including artificial intelligence.

Comprised of a wide range of activities and programming, the initiative’s goal is to leave UVA “in a better place,” according to Bourne.

A little more than a year after its launch, the University would find itself part of a national focus on higher education following a change in presidential administrations in Washington, particularly over the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Amid scrutiny from the Justice Department, UVA President Jim Ryan announced his resignation in June 2025.

When reflecting on UVA’s future and the role of higher education in society, Bourne acknowledged the challenges of the past year while striking a hopeful note.

“UVA’s been around for 200 years. It’s going to come out of this and, in some ways, it’ll be stronger,” he said.

A visionary until the end, Bourne also discussed what he believed was needed to position the University for future success amid the transformative and, in some ways, disruptive forces buffeting it, including artificial intelligence. 

“The first part is to have a vision. … It’s a charter that everybody gets behind. We don’t have that at the University for AI. It’s just a random set of activities. We don’t yet have it in the School, but we’re moving toward it,” he said, adding that the infrastructure and effective organizational structure are also critical.

In 2025, Bourne was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer. On March 8, 2026, he died, survived by his wife, Roma; son Scott (Molly); daughter Melanie; and granddaughter Jessica.

His passing reverberated across the University and scientific community. 

“Phil’s passion, his leadership and his wonderful ability to share his excitement and bring others into his vision made the School of Data Science all that it is today,” said UVA President Scott Beardsley, who served alongside Bourne many years during his tenure as dean of the Darden School of Business. 

Professor Jeffrey Blume, who was tapped as the School’s interim dean, said Bourne “poured his heart and soul into building the School and into the people who make it what it is. The School of Data Science stands today as a reflection of his vision, his energy, and his deep commitment to this community.”

In one of his last interviews before his death, when plans to step down amid failing health were underway, Bourne, a dean who insisted that his office be no larger than any other faculty member’s at the School of Data Science, begged off a question about how he hoped to be remembered, preferring not to think of himself in grandiose terms.

When asked what he was most proud of, however, the answer took no time at all to summon: “Everybody. Everybody at the School.”

The many tributes to Bourne posted on social media and elsewhere in the days that followed often invoked his signature, “Onwards.” While Bourne’s service to the people and School he loved is now complete, his impact and legacy proceeds onwards, toward new discoveries, toward new ideas, and in the lives of generations of students to come.