Data Science: Psychoinformatics

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Bachelor of Science in Data Science: Psychoinformatics Concentration

Top 5 Reasons to Study

Gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to work at the intersection of psychology and data science to analyze human behavior using large-scale digital data from smartphones, social media, online experiments, and other modern sources.

Learn to represent human behavior and psychological phenomena as data (including social media posts, smartphone interactions, online experimental data, digital communications, and behavioral traces) to overcome traditional research limitations.

Learn to extract psychological insights from Big Data to understand personality traits, predict mood, analyze social behavior, identify mental health indicators, and reveal subtle patterns in human cognition and emotion.

Build intelligent systems that enhance psychological understanding and mental health support through behavioral prediction, mood tracking, social media analysis, and AI-driven platforms that advance both psychological research and intervention.

Gain the ability to advance psychological science by mining large-scale behavioral datasets, conducting controlled online experiments at scale, improving mental health assessment and intervention, and personalizing therapeutic approaches.

Core
Skills

Apply psychometric, experimental, and other data to understand human behavior and mental processes.
Collect psychology related data from digital sources like social media, online experiments, and sensors.
Analyze data to find meaningful patterns in thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

Sample
Jobs

Product Scientist – AI Ethics
Behavioral Research Specialist
Human Systems Analyst
Psychometrician
AI Researcher

Successful Career Outcomes

$103,500 Median Annual Salary

35% 10 Year Growth Expected

Top
Employment
Industries

Psychological Research: Analyzing human behavior using large-scale digital data
Mental Health Services: Improving assessment, intervention, and therapeutic approaches
Social Tech (Social Media / Smartphone Data): Analyzing digital communication patterns and interactions
Cognitive Science: Identifying patterns in human cognition and emotion
Behavioral Tech: Developing mood tracking applications and behavioral prediction models

Brag
Points

Study with the best: data science majors at MSU have a median ACT score of 29
Our students have access to Ptolemy, a 64 GPU NVDIA system dedicated to academic use
38% of our Data Science students participate in the Shackouls Honors College

Experiential Learning Opportunities

Capstone Project: You will participate in a two-semester capstone experience in which you will be matched with a geoscience faculty mentor as you pursue a meaningful project.

Perception and Cognitive Neuroscience (PCN) Lab: Directed by Dr. Michael Pratte, our lab uses functional MRI (fMRI) and EEG data to study human memory and perception. Our researchers actively recruit undergraduates for research credits.

Health Enhancement through Activity and Lifestyle (HEAL) Lab: Combines behavioral data with physiological metrics (like EEG) to study motor skills and cognition.

Market Innovation Lab & Observatory (MILO) Lab: uses eye tracking, facial recognition, and EEGs to help companies serve consumer needs, build better brands, and develop stronger understandings of the people that every business is built around.

Data Science Academic Institute: Our undergraduate researchers work on faculty projects in diverse subject areas.

You'll take five hands-on labs that use real data. This builds career-relevant experiential learning directly into your coursework.