‘Nonprofits and community organizations are the ideal incubator’

Belmont University President Greg Jones in August announced the launch of the Belmont Data Collaborative, an initiative that will develop curricula and programming for both Belmont students and local technology-oriented professionals. Belmont intends to invest more than $60 million in the next five years to build the BDC, a sum that will include the effort’s own physical space on campus. Leading the push is Charlie Apigian, the founding director of the Data Science Institute at Middle Tennessee State University who also is now a Belmont professor of business and system analytics. Apigian, who is charged with building partnerships to connect the BDC to various parts of Belmont’s campus as well as Middle Tennessee’s economy more broadly, spoke with Kathryn Rickmeyer about his plans and some of his team’s next steps.