STEM-classified degree: graduates are eligible for 3 years of Optional Practical Training (OPT) in the USA. The big data systems concentration within the Master of Science degree program in computer science is designed for graduate students who want to pursue a thorough education in the area of big data systems. The program has a thesis and nonthesis project portfolio option. This concentration provides students with knowledge, skills and advanced research expertise in designing scalable systems (parallel, distributed and real-time) for acquiring, storing, processing and accessing large-scale heterogeneous multisource data and in using analytical tools to mine information from the data. Graduates are able to choose and deploy the appropriate data management processing and analysis systems with a suitable structured or unstructured data model that a particular task and domain application needs.