Global analytics software leader FICO is partnering with Morehouse College for the fourth year of the FICO Educational Analytics Challenge to cultivate the next generation of data scientists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) nationwide.
Presented in partnership with the HBCU Data Science Consortium (DSC), the semester-long program pairs classroom theory with hands-on artificial intelligence model-building, giving students direct exposure to professional data scientists' work and equipping them with career-ready technical skills.
FICO’s Chief Analytics Officer, Dr. Scott Zoldi, and his team of industry data scientists provide weekly lectures and industry-quality tools for students to use in their study.
In the new cohort, students will investigate critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities by designing and training their own machine learning systems to spot network intrusions, including botnets, ransomware, and crypto mining, before they cause damage. The Challenge will help students gain intrusion-detection experience that the data science field increasingly relies on to prevent cybercrimes.
“As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so must the people building the systems that defend against them,” said Dr. Scott Zoldi, Chief Analytics Officer at FICO. “Through this program, students learn and design AI models that must make decisions on first-seen and evolving cyberattacks with sophisticated unsupervised AI. It’s the kind of hands-on, high-stakes practical work that prepares them for a career in analytics, and we’re proud to help guide them through it and influence data science curriculum at the same time.”
Morehouse joins Alabama A&M University, Dillard University, and Fayetteville State University as continuing participants in the Challenge. In addition to curriculum and instruction, FICO provides internship opportunities, access to financial grants to support students at participating institutions, and resources focused on workforce and career development.
“Our continued partnership with FICO demonstrates the power of embedding practical, cutting-edge industry training into the academic experience at Morehouse,” said Professor Yvonne Phillips. “From identifying financial fraud in our first cohort to engineering custom generative language models in Year 3, our students have repeatedly proven they can master high-stakes analytics. Stepping into Year 4 to train machine learning systems against cyber-attacks gives our men of Morehouse the advanced technical capabilities and ethical framework required to lead today's cybersecurity and AI workforce.”
The FICO partnership of purpose advances the mission of the HBCU Data Science Consortium, which brings together leaders in academia, industry, and government to expand data science curricula and build a robust pipeline of diverse talent entering the field.