The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab

What The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab does

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab (DaSL) is a research and education unit within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Its stated mission is to enhance data science thinking globally and make data science accessible, targeting graduate students, global self-paced learners, bioinformatics and genomics researchers, and underserved Baltimore youth. The lab's portfolio centers on four-plus active Coursera specializations (Data Science, Genomic Data Science, Executive Data Science, Tidyverse Skills, Mastering Software Development in R) and supporting open-source R packages (swirl, ari, didactr, OTTR) distributed via GitHub and CRAN, all built on R and the Tidyverse ecosystem. Complementary outputs include six-plus books sold via Leanpub and Amazon, the Open Case Studies educational resource, four podcasts, the Simply Statistics blog, and the Cloud-Based Data Science (CBDS) and CBDS+ programs.

The lab's go-to-market is community-led and product-led growth: free MOOC auditing on Coursera, pay-what-you-want book pricing, and no-cost community programs serve as top-of-funnel acquisition, while Coursera certification fees, Leanpub book sales, NIH R01 grant funding, and Bloomberg American Health Initiative philanthropic funding form the financial base. Distribution runs through Coursera, Leanpub, GitHub, YouTube, and in-person Baltimore partnerships, with cumulative MOOC enrolment cited at 8 million+ across programs and the Data Science Specialization described as the world's largest at 1.76M+ enrolled.

Operationally, DaSL is led by faculty including Jeff Leek (Professor of Biostatistics and Oncology), Roger Peng (Professor of Biostatistics, 2016 Mortimer Spiegelman Award recipient), Brian Caffo (Professor, PECASE award recipient), and Stephanie Hicks (Assistant Professor, co-creator of the Tidyverse Specialization), supported by associate/assistant scientists, research associates, a videographer/editor, and program staff for CBDS+. The organization does not disclose revenue and is governed as an academic unit under Johns Hopkins University rather than as an independent commercial entity.

Name

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab

Legal name

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab

Website

https://jhudatascience.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab (DaSL) is an academic research and education unit within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that builds Coursera MOOCs, open-source R packages, books, and community programs to teach data science to global learners and underserved Baltimore youth.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Data Science Education and Online Learning

NAICS

Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (54171), Exam Preparation and Tutoring (611691)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYEDAFABAH

Virtual Labs, Remote Labs & Hands-On Practice Tools

Education/Education Technology (EdTech) & Digital Learning/Virtual Classrooms, Video Conferencing & Remote Instruction Tools

SECONDARYEDAFAHAG

Assessment & Quiz Item Authoring Tools (within course builders)

Education/Education Technology (EdTech) & Digital Learning/Content Authoring, Instructional Design & eLearning Development Tools

SECONDARYEDAGAJAG

Open Lab Manuals & Practical Guides (STEM/CTE)

Education/Educational Publishing & Learning Content/Open Educational Resources (OER) & Open Textbooks

Keywords

• Data science education
• Open educational resources
• Online learning courses
• R programming tools
• Statistical training programs

Headquarters

HQ city

Baltimore

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Educational Content Sales: Books sold through Leanpub and Amazon on a pay-what-you-want basis, including suggested prices (e.g., $10 for 'How to be a modern scientist'). MOOC certification fees through Coursera platform.
2. Grant Funding: NIH R01 funding for postdoctoral research (e.g., studying data science as a science through randomized experiments). Bloomberg American Health Initiative funding for Open Case Studies project. Grant funding supports research activities and specific educational initiatives.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab (DaSL) is a research and education group within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that teaches people to design, collect, interpret, and interact with data. It builds and distributes massive open online courses (MOOCs) on Coursera, open-source R software packages (swirl, ari, didactr, OTTR) for interactive learning and automated course generation, and educational books on Leanpub and Amazon covering R programming, statistics, and modern scientific practice.

Product overview

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab operates as an educational technology and open-source software organization within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The portfolio consists of four active MOOC programs (Data Science, Tidyverse Skills, Genomic Data Science, and Executive Data Science specializations) delivered primarily through Coursera, along with open-source R software packages (swirl, ari, didactr, OTTR) for interactive learning and automated course creation. The lab also publishes educational books on Leanpub and Amazon covering data science, statistics, and R programming. These offerings work together as a comprehensive data science education ecosystem: the courses provide structured learning pathways, the software packages enable interactive practice and content automation, and the books serve as supplementary reference materials. The lab has enrolled over 8 million students globally across its platforms.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• swirl: Statistics With Interactive R Learning - an R package for interactive learning of statistics in R.
• didactr
• ari
• OTTR
• Open Case Studies
• Cloud-Based Data Science (CBDS)
• CBDS+

Products and services

• Data Science Specialization A 10-course Coursera specialization covering the complete data science pipeline from asking questions to publishing results, including R programming, statistical inference, regression models, and data products development. Co-created by Jeff Leek, Roger Peng, and Brian Caffo; the largest data science specialization in the world with 1.76M+ enrolled.
• Tidyverse Skills for Data Science in R Specialization A 5-course Coursera specialization co-created by Stephanie Hicks and Carrie Wright (with Roger Peng and Shannon Ellis) that teaches data science using the Tidyverse family of packages, covering data importing, wrangling, visualization, and modeling.
• Genomic Data Science Specialization A Coursera specialization covering concepts and tools for analyzing next-generation sequencing data using the command line, Python, R, Bioconductor, and Galaxy. Targets bioinformatics and genomics researchers.
• Executive Data Science Specialization A 4-course Coursera specialization teaching how to assemble and lead a data science enterprise, including recruiting teams and managing data science projects. Targets data science leaders and managers.
• Mastering Software Development in R Specialization A Coursera specialization covering R software development skills including package building, advanced R programming, and data visualization tool development.
• Open Case Studies An open-source educational resource providing real-world case studies for teaching students how to derive knowledge from messy data, developed by Stephanie Hicks and the Open Case Studies team and selected as a High-Impact Project by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative.
• Cloud-Based Data Science (CBDS) A set of pay-what-you-want massive open online courses that can be completed on any computer with a web browser. Includes the CBDS+ program providing free 14-week training for Baltimore City youth.
• swirl Statistics With Interactive R Learning - an R package that teaches statistics and R programming interactively within the R console. A standalone open-source software tool for interactive learning of statistics.
• ari (Automated R Instructor) An R package that creates videos from plain text files using Amazon Polly for text-to-speech conversion and FFmpeg for video stitching. Used for automated course narration.
• didactr An R package that creates automated courses from slides and scripts using the ari package, with uploads to YouTube and other services with translation capabilities.
• OTTR (Open-source Tools for Training Resources) A set of tools for course publishing and maintenance that enables content creators to publish material to multiple massive online learner communities using familiar rendering mechanics.
• How to be a Modern Scientist A book on Leanpub about modern tools in scientific workflows including Twitter, GitHub, Figshare, and Alt Metrics, by Jeff Leek. Sold on a pay-what-you-want basis with a suggested price of $10.
• The Elements of Data Analytic Style A book focusing on the details of data analysis that fall through the cracks in traditional statistics classes, by Jeff Leek. Sold on a pay-what-you-want basis on Leanpub.
• Executive Data Science A concise book providing a crash course in data science for assembling and leading data science teams. Sold on a pay-what-you-want basis.
• CBDS+ Program A no-cost, 14-week educational initiative for young-adult, high school and GED-graduates in Baltimore City, offered by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in partnership with the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition. Includes wrap-around support services.

Quantifiable outcome

• 8 million+ people enrolled in MOOCs
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

AI capability10 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Bloomberg American Health InitiativecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2019The Open Case Studies project was selected as a High-Impact Project in 2019-2020 by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and Bloomberg Philanthropies, providing funding and support for developing real-world case study materials for data science education.
• Historic East Baltimore Community Action CoalitioncoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner in the CBDS+ (Cloud-Based Data Science Plus) program - a no-cost, 14-week educational initiative for underserved youth in Baltimore City, offered by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
• LeanpubcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorPrimary platform for publishing educational books on a pay-what-you-want basis. Books include 'How to be a modern scientist', 'The elements of data analytic style', 'Mastering Software Development in R', 'R programming for Data Science', 'Statistical inference for data science', and 'Executive data science'.
• CourseracoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorPrimary MOOC platform hosting the Data Science Specialization (largest in the world with 1.76M+ enrolled), Genomic Data Science Specialization, Executive Data Science Specialization, Tidyverse Skills Specialization, and Mastering Software Development in R Specialization.
• CourseracoreTechnology or IntegrationPlatform for running randomized experiments studying data science education through the NIH R01 funded postdoctoral fellowship. Experiments evaluate the process of data science learning step by step.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Posit (formerly RStudio): Posit builds the RStudio IDE, Tidyverse-adjacent tools, and educational content for R-based data science. Directly comparable as a peer in the R education ecosystem and developer tools space, with overlapping open-source and commercial educational offerings.
• DataCamp: DataCamp is a leading data science and AI education platform offering interactive courses in Python, R, and SQL. Directly comparable as a competitor in the online data science education market with a freemium model and similar learner base.
• Dataquest: Dataquest provides project-based, browser-based data science training in Python, R, and SQL. Directly comparable as a subscription-based data science education platform targeting the same learner segment as DaSL's MOOCs.
• DeepLearning.AI: DeepLearning.AI, founded by Andrew Ng, offers industry-recognized AI and data science specializations, including collaborations on Coursera. Comparable as a peer producing high-enrollment data science MOOCs with a similar academic-to-online educational model.
• fast.ai: fast.ai offers free, high-quality deep learning and data science courses, with a focus on practical coding skills. Comparable as a peer in open-access data science education, though it emphasizes Python while DaSL emphasizes R.
• 365 Data Science: 365 Data Science offers structured online courses in data science, statistics, and machine learning. Comparable as a peer in the dedicated data science education space with a similar target learner audience and certificate-based monetization model.

Broad incumbents

• Kaggle: Kaggle is a large data science community and learning platform with courses, competitions, and datasets. Comparable as a broad data science education and community player, though it focuses on Python and applied competitions rather than R-based academic content.
• edX: edX is a leading MOOC platform offering university-level data science and statistics courses. Comparable as a broader incumbent in the online higher education and data science training market, often featuring Johns Hopkins and peer institutions.
• Codecademy: Codecademy is a subscription-based interactive coding education platform with growing data science offerings. Comparable as a broader incumbent in the interactive online education market targeting career-oriented learners with hands-on practice tools.
• Coursera: Coursera is the MOOC platform hosting DaSL's specializations and the broader data science education market. Comparable as a platform partner and the dominant marketplace in which DaSL's content is distributed to learners globally.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/jhudsl
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCAX7NABv5SXvV83mJD1D1Gg
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/johns-hopkins-university-data-science-lab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles15 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about The Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab