The course lays the foundation for predictive analytics and “Big Data” methodologies via state-of-the-art data science techniques and computational tools, and incorporates a series of hands-on case studies motivated by industrial applications and current research questions in the field. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with data manipulation and transformation techniques, and will be capable of applying analytics and data architecture plans to improve decision making in business processes and investigate new ways of exploiting the value of the data.