Ohio’s three C’s — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati — have opportunities for data scientists. Keep reading for a look at research initiatives, scholarships, professional communities and job prospects for data scientists in the Buckeye State.

Or, you can skip to programs and view our list of Ohio’s data science degrees.

According to CompTIA’s interactive tool, Ohio’s tech workforce accounted for 4.5% of the state’s workforce as of 2025. There are many initiatives going on in the realm of big data at the state’s universities.

Here are some ways Ohio is using data to solve public and private sector challenges:

Online data science education in Ohio is limited, with just a handful of public and private institutions offering programs at the graduate level.

There are a couple of online graduate certificate options in Ohio, including the following. Cleveland State University’s Data-Based Decision-Making certificate is designed for school administrators or data specialists in K-12 education. Just down the road, Kent State University’s Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics is an 18-credit program of study centered on management processes.

The online MBA at Ohio University features a Business Analytics concentration. University of Cincinnati’s online MS of Health Informatics is built to be relevant for both health workers (such as nurses) without IT experience and IT professionals who haven’t worked in healthcare. Xavier University’s MS in Health Economic and Clinical Outcomes Research (HECOR) is similar, but it’s a quant-heavy HEOR/health economics program, so students should be comfortable with quantitative thinking. Last, aspiring managers can take Kent State’s online MS in Health Informatics.

A bootcamp is a short, intensive educational program intended to quickly orient students to working in a new field. Data science and data analytics bootcamps in Ohio can help newcomers get to work sooner. While some bootcamps in Ohio focus solely on data science, the study of how knowledge is gleaned from raw information, or on data analytics, the specific processes by which insights can be drawn from information, other bootcamps combine the study of both data science and data analytics. See our guides to learn more about data science bootcamps or data analytics bootcamps in Ohio.

If you’re an on-campus graduate student, one of the first things you may want to ask about is assistantships, which allow students to pay for their degree and living expenses in exchange for time spent teaching, conducting research, or doing other department work. Online students, meanwhile, typically do not have such opportunities and should look for college- or department-level scholarships. We’ve rounded up a few awards for aspiring data scientists at Ohio’s universities:

The Buckeye State has many Meetups for prospective and practicing data scientists, many of them focused on individual tools. R users can find a community of peers at the Cleveland R User Group or R-Ladies Columbus.  

For bigger-picture networking and learning, Cleveland’s long-running big data scene has evolved into Cleveland AI & Data (a community that grew out of earlier Cleveland Big Data/Hadoop and later merged with Cleveland AI), Cincinnati has the Cincinnati Data and Analytics Meetup with monthly talks and networking, and Columbus offers options like Data, Cloud and AI in Columbus (IBM-sponsored; includes Hadoop-based analytics topics) and Buckeye DAMA for data management and governance-oriented professionals.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Meetup.com links to plenty of other active groups, so explore your area to find more.

It’s not that there’s a lack of events for data scientists in Ohio. It’s just that they are held so irregularly. A new event may pop up on the radar for a year but never return. In 2016, for instance, OSU hosted the Topology, Geometry, and Data Analysis Conference, but gave no indication if it would be a regular event.

Here are a few small events that may run year to year in Ohio:

Let’s take a tour of Ohio, stopping off in its major cities. In the southwest corner of the state, Cincinnati looks out upon the Ohio River. The University of Cincinnati is closely involved with big data, and the city government created an Office of Performance & Data Analytics back in 2014, which has encouraged local tech companies to grow roots in the state. They include InfoTrust (data services for marketers), Astronomer (data platform providers that relocated its headquarters to New York City but will continue to have a presence in Cincinnati), and Rocklogic.io (cloud consulting).

Moving northeast along Interstate 71, you’ll hit Columbus in the center of the state. The capital has its own data scene. For starters, OSU employs a number of faculty working in data science. But research is also coming out of the Columbus Collaboratory, a consortium of big name companies working in big data.

Get back on the interstate for one last stop, this time in Cleveland, on the shores of Lake Erie. The state’s largest city is home to Explorys, which was founded in the region and later acquired by IBM in 2015 as part of the buildout of IBM’s Watson Health business. This business was them later sold by IBM and rebranded as Merative. Other major players in the big data market include the Fortune 500 company Progressive Insurance, headquartered in Cleveland.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2024, data scientists made an average $100,260 per year in Ohio.

Information last updated: December 2025

If you’re looking for information on career paths that involve STEM, see our guides below:

Data Science and Analytics Careers:

Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Careers:

Marketing and User Research Careers:

Compare Careers and STEM Fields:

We found 9 universities in Ohio offering Masters of Data Science programs (and/or closely related programs, like MS in Analytics / Masters in Business Analytics). The university’s website will have the most up to date information on specific programs.

If you represent a university and would like to contact us about editing any of our listings, or adding new programs, please send an email to info@mastersindatascience.org.