Name: Using Data to Change the World: Applied Data Science at University of Chicago with Daniel Truesdale
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T17:43:17.000Z
Duration: 27 min 43 s
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Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Boundaries, the world's premier podcast for international students.

I am honored today to be joined by Daniel Truesdale, the director of enrollment management and analytics for the Master's program in Applied Data science at one of the world's premier institutions, the University of Chicago.

Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Now for international students who may not be familiar with Chicago, let's ground them in place and time.

So the University of Chicago's primary campus is in a leafy neighborhood called Hyde Park, a little bit south of downtown.

But your particular program is downtown, is that correct?

When people think of Chicago, they see the skyline, they see the, if you're from Chicago, the Sears Tower, not the Willis Tower, the Sears Tower, but

it's about seven miles south and that's Hyde Park.

And in Hyde park you have a lot of the, you know, more of the traditional classical camp college campus feel.

Matter of fact, you know, for those who want to kind of Google search this, UChicago had a lot of possibilities for being for the Harry Potter franchise.

If we can't get this library that's in London, we're going to go to UChicago.

So it's a cool fact to kind of look up something that I like to share because I'm a Harry Potter fanatic.

But what's nice is that even though our program is in the NBC tower, which is in the Chicago Loop and the Gleacher center is there too.

That's where the booth students in the part time booth will take classes.

We have a shuttle service that connects students from Hyde park to Gleacher to NBC and vice versa.

And plus being in the third largest city in the U.S.

public transportation's not going to be an issue.

You have the, what people would call kind of like the subway system, we call it the L, public buses and then obviously taxis, Ubers, et cetera.

So it's a very walkable city and it's a very connected city, which is great.

You do not, we always joked when I used to live in the city with my wife, we'd always say one car is one too many.

You do not need your own car to commute within the city.

Well, for the audience, I lived in Chicago for a decade.

I think it's the greatest city in the world.

And I did own a car for a couple years in Chicago, and

it just collected dust on the street and we ended up selling it.

And very, very arcane and confusing parking rules.

And another fun fact for folks overseas, you know, Hyde park is the neighborhood where President.

I don't know if he still has a house there, but

that's to give you an idea of the pedigree of the neighborhood.

Amazing collection of food and used bookstores in both places.

And then you're also right in the neighborhood of the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower, which.

I mean, it's definitely one of the big components, the Chicago River.

So we're right on the Chicago river, which it's a very gorgeous place to be.

What's really cool to see is it's a very lively city.

And especially where we're at, we're right by the Mag Mile.

Truly, we're in the center of everything.

So you're in the heart of the city when you're in NBC Tower, Gleacher Center.

Never an endless supply of things to do as well.

You have Millennium park, they host different events and festivals.

You have the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Chicago Bears sporting events, the Chicago Fire.

I was driving to work the other day and I saw that.

Who's the famous soccer player from the Messi.

Messi is going to be coming and playing against the Fire.

You know, it's maintained its character, obviously, throughout the years.

The other really neat thing, too, is we have 77 unique neighborhoods in the city of Chicago.

So you have different cultures that you're able to tap into very easily just by going to different neighborhoods.

And so, you know, if you're in the mood for Italian, you can find Italian.

If you're in the mood for Chinese, you can find Chinese, you know, whatever it may be.

Because, as you were mentioning earlier, John, you know, UChicago is not just renowned domestically, but internationally.

And it's always great to see students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, come into the university and bring their history with them as well.

And it only enriches our students education because they're getting a wider scope of, okay, you know, for this, let's say data science, for instance, this is what's happening in Brazil, right?

Or this is what's happening in China, this is what's happening in Japan, this is what's happening in India.

And so it only enriches our students education because they're not just learning the theoretical concepts, but

they're being able to then say, here's how it's being applied into reality as well.

And here are some of the political ramifications, here are some of the business ramifications.

It's not just purely theoretical, it has those real world implications too.

I could go on and on about the diversity of Chicago.

I mean, the whole world is there but just one bit of symbolism.

If you walk outside of your building and just go to the Tribune Tower.

Along the walls of the Tribune Tower are various stones from landmarks across the world.

There's a stone from the Great Wall of China, a piece of the Great Pyramid at Giza, a piece of the St.

And to me, it serves as a symbol of the fact that the world is in Chicago.

So Chicago is an amazing international city.

But I want to dive a little bit deeper into your field of expertise.

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Using Data to Change the World: Applied Data Science at University of Chicago with Daniel Truesdale

constantly

discipline

process

instance