What You Can Do with an MBA/MS in Applied Data Science
Upon graduating, members of the inaugural MBA/MS in Applied Data Science cohort are bridging the gap between management and technology at top companies.
- By
- June 15, 2026
- Joint Degrees
In 2024, Chicago Booth and the University of Chicago launched a joint-degree program for ambitious students who aspire to lead in data-driven industries. Since then, the MBA/MS in Applied Data Science has allowed students to gain a unique combination of analytics and business skills while studying under leading experts from Booth as well as the UChicago Data Science Institute and Physical Sciences Division.
This year, the program’s first cohort graduated. Their joint degrees are already setting these new alumni apart in the job market, showing employers they’re equipped to translate complex data insights into actionable business decisions in industries ranging from AI to investment banking to product marketing.
Hear from three recent graduates about how the program shaped their professional journeys and set them up for success.
Graduate Career Outcomes
Lauren Adolphe: Investment Banking
Coming from a robotics engineering background, Lauren Adolphe, MBA/MS-ADS ’26, entered the joint-degree program with experience designing hardware systems informed by data at Tesla. She says her MBA/MS-ADS experience shifted her perspective on the relationship between business and technology. Notably, she discovered that some of the most important choices happen before any technical work begins.
“I came from a mindset of building,” Adolphe says. “What I realized here is that sometimes the highest-leverage decisions happen before you start the execution—deciding what should be built in the first place.”
That insight became especially clear during Strategy Simulation: Creating Value in Complex and Ambiguous Settings. Taught by Kathleen Fitzgerald, clinical professor of strategic management, the course allowed Adolphe and her classmates to manage a company in a fast-moving, competitive environment, making decisions across pricing, production, and marketing while adapting to performance data in real time.
“At the beginning, we were making our best guesses,” she says. “Over time, we could analyze the numbers, benchmark ourselves against other teams, and adjust our assumptions.”
The lesson carried into the program’s capstone project, where Adolphe and her team had the opportunity to use data analysis and interpretation to tackle business problems for a real-world client—Data for the Common Good, a health-focused research organization housed at UChicago.
“You can take the same dataset and get very different results depending on how you approach it,” Adolphe says. “How you mine the data—and what assumptions you bring to it—really matters.”
Equally important was learning how to communicate those insights clearly to the company’s executives. “Being able to present data in a way that’s digestible and informs decision-making is incredibly powerful,” she says.
The diversity of the inaugural cohort also shaped her experience. Students came from a wide range of backgrounds, including consulting, finance, entrepreneurship, and AI. Everyone brought different perspectives on how data can be applied.
“It showed how central data has become across industries,” Adolphe says. “Whether it’s startups, investing, or social impact, there are so many ways to apply it.”
Now, Adolphe will use her new skill set as an associate in the technology investment banking group at Morgan Stanley in Menlo Park, California, where she also interned last summer.
“You can take the same dataset and get very different results depending on how you approach it. How you mine the data—and what assumptions you bring to it—really matters.”
— Lauren Adolph
Mohamed Abdelhamid: Product Management
Before coming to Booth, Mohamed “Mo” Abdelhamid, MBA/MS-ADS ’26, worked at Amazon Web Services, where conversations around AI and large language models happened all the time. But the joint-degree program gave him a new appreciation for the importance of sound data infrastructure.
“The course that most shifted my thinking was Data Engineering Platforms for Analytics,” Abdelhamid says. “Before you can work with large models, you need a strong data foundation.”
A class project analyzing airport operations brought that lesson into focus. Abdelhamid and his fellow students combined multiple datasets to explore whether airports with fewer runways experienced more delays, independent of flight volume. The challenge quickly shifted from analytics to managing inconsistent information.
“One source might say Newark has four runways; another says three,” he says. “You have to decide what data to trust and how to reconcile those differences.”
The experience highlighted the complexity of working with large-scale organizational data and reinforced how difficult it can be to establish a reliable source of truth. But the program gave Abdelhamid a framework for tackling these types of complex challenges. It also changed how he communicates about AI and analytics.
“I’ve been able to look behind the curtain and understand what’s actually happening in these models,” he says. “That allows me to explain it to people who might be interested but not deeply involved in the technical details.”
Abdelhamid’s newfound ability to bridge technical and business conversations has become central to his career goals. This summer, he’ll move to New York City to start a full-time role with Percepta, General Catalyst’s AI transformation company, where he’ll be embedded within Fortune 500 clients as a product manager driving enterprise AI strategy and implementation.
“Understanding what to build, why it matters, and where you create value—that’s where the MBA perspective really comes in,” Abdelhamid says.
“Learning how different people approach problems and collaborate was a big part of the experience. You learn how to meet people where they are and create an environment where everyone can contribute.”
— Kevin O’Leary
Kevin O’Leary: Consulting and Sports Analytics
For Kevin O’Leary, MBA/MS-ADS ’26, one of the program’s defining experiences was the capstone project: a fast-paced assignment that challenged students to solve an ambiguous, business-facing problem from both technical and strategic perspectives.
“Our capstone project was a great example of receiving a broad prompt and figuring out how to build something useful and forward-looking,” O’Leary says. “It wasn’t just about the technical side. It was also thinking about the end user, the market, and how to make the product appealing and practical.”
His four-member group developed an AI-powered pickleball coaching app that analyzed gameplay video and generated feedback. The project combined computer vision, model training, and customer-facing product development within a nine-week timeline.
“We had to move very quickly,” O’Leary says. “It really required strong teamwork and balancing both the data science and business sides of the project.”
Like his classmates Adolphe and Abdelhamid, O’Leary also strengthened his ability to communicate technical ideas to nontechnical audiences through the program. Moving between rigorous data science coursework and MBA classes with students from diverse professional backgrounds helped him refine how he explained complex ideas.
“That mix of classmates helped me learn how to speak clearly to people who don’t necessarily have a technical background,” O’Leary says.
The joint MBA/MS-ADS cohort brought together students at different stages of their careers, including MBA students with several years of work experience, data science students earlier in their careers, and hybrid students balancing school with full-time jobs.
“Learning how different people approach problems and collaborate was a big part of the experience,” O’Leary says. “You learn how to meet people where they are and create an environment where everyone can contribute.”
O’Leary says the joint degree has also expanded his sense of possibility. “It’s opened a lot of doors,” he says. “Seeing what my classmates are doing has made me feel much more confident about putting myself out there and trying different paths.”
O’Leary will intern in the baseball research and development department of the Tampa Bay Rays during the MLB season this summer. Then, in the fall, he’ll start as a full-time consultant at Bain & Company in Washington, DC, where he previously interned last summer.
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