c carson headshot2

Cathryn Carson

Professor, History

Cathryn Carson holds the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science at UC Berkeley. A former associate dean in the Social Sciences Division, she is the founding director of D-Lab, Berkeley’s social science data laboratory and a founding co-investigator of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. She served as the initial faculty lead of Berkeley’s Data Science Education Program, which holds responsibility for integrating data science into undergraduate education across the campus and launching a new major and minor that immediately became among the university’s largest. She co-chaired the university’s Data Science Education Rapid Action Team, which developed the broad-based, integrative vision for Berkeley’s data science curriculum. She subsequently chaired the Faculty Advisory Board of the campus-wide Data Science Planning Initiative, which articulated Berkeley’s commitment to the integration of all aspects of data science (technical foundations, interdisciplinary applications, and social/ethical implications) and developed the blueprint for Berkeley’s new Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Carson was trained in physics before receiving her Ph.D. in history of science from Harvard University.