Data science in the natural sciences

"Big data is shaping diverse fields, showing that past predictions from data-driven natural sciences are now coming to pass"

The author of this opinion article, Chris Wiggins, explains the importance of data in the field of natural sciences. 
One important point of the article deals with the need for skilled data scientists. Excerpt from the article:
"In 2011, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that between 140,000 and 190,000 additional data scientistswill need to be trained by 2018 in order to meet the increased demand in academia and industry in the United States alone. The multidisciplinary skills required for data science applied to such fields as health and biology will include:
-the computational skills needed to work with large datasets usually shared online;
-the ability to format these data in a way amenable to mathematical modeling;
-the curiosity to explore these data to identify what features our models may be built on;
-the technical skills which apply, extend, and validate statistical and machine learning methods; and most importantly,
-the ability to visualize, interpret, and communicate the resulting insights in a way which advances science. (As the mathematician Richard Hamming said, “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.”)