Workshop on `Opportunities in Data World’

A workshop on `Opportunities in Data World’ was conducted by Department of Data Science, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Lavasa on 20^th September 2019 in the Smart Room from 11:15 AM to 04:00 PM. The resource persons were Mr. K Sridharan (CEO - CleverInsight) and Mr. Robin (CTO - CleverInsight). The interactive workshop was attended by I-Sem, B Sc (DS), M Sc (DS) and MA (Economics) students.

Mr Kothandaraman Sridharan is an IT veteran who has co-founded BFL Software - Mphasis, which is currently owned by HP. He began his career in Wipro and headed its Customer Support organization. Mr Sridharan has also written an operating system and compiled application packages such as production planning and control. He has rich experience in sales and support. He is a member of the advisory board - University of Memphis (MIS) - FedEx Institute of Technology. Mr Sridharan specializes in outsourcing, energy and environment, supply chain and education.

Mr Bastin Robin is currently working as a Chief Data Scientist at CleverInsight for past two years and nine months. He is also Adjunct Professor and an author. He takes care of the open source data preprocessing engine called Sparx. Apart from this Mr Bastin is adept in researching on handling unstructured data for industries such as FMCG and Manufacturing. Mr Bastin works on areas such as recommendation systems, spam filtering, user modeling, fraud detection, social graph mining, emotional modeling, sentimental analysis, graph search and churn prediction.

While the overall focus was on applications of data science to enterprise operations and processes, individual courses tackle data handling issues such as data capture, management, analysis, and communication for decision-making were also discussed.

The guest speakers addressed the students yesterday, 19^th September 2019 and gave valuable inputs about Data Science. It was brought to everyone’s knowledge by Mr Sridharan that Data has changed tremendously in the last twenty years. Huge amount of data can be processed at an increasingly tremendous speed and at an efficient cost and requires less storage space. Analyzing data has been made possible with the help of new software tools and techniques which help in filtering data and take only important information into consideration.

Mr Sridharan asserted that companies can use them to do predictive analysis and know about their competition too. For instance, edge artificial intelligence is a sensor hardware coming up in the Data Analysis world, which can be used in manufacturing and healthcare. The audience was informed that Data can be used in seven vertices such as banking and finance, retail industry, manufacturing industry, transportation, telecom and healthcare.

Next, Mr Bastin Robin addressed the students about the basics of data science, role of a data scientist and the Open AI Foundation. He simplified the concept and explained it coherently. He articulated that Data is a common terminology for every person in the present world. So, instead of focusing on more tools and techniques, it is better to understand the basics properly and work on data from the simple level using one tool. Knowing all the features of one tool such as MS-Excel will help the user generate information from the data.

Mr Robin gave detailed information about the fundamentals of data. He categorically mentioned that the role of a data scientist or data practitioner is considered to be significant but challenging because a lot of patience is required to observe data properly and come to a conclusion.

A Collaboration Meeting was conducted in the Boardroom, CHRIST, Lavasa and there was a discussion with Data Science Department regarding current lookout. The guest speakers offered to help the department curate the curriculum according to industry needs. An important MOU was signed between Christ and MLC aka CleverInsight for future collaboration. It was brought to everyone’s notice how CleverInsight can help CHRIST, Lavasa to organize an international conference on AI and DS. It also mentioned that CleverInsight will open AI Foundation Incubation and Collaborative Research centre.

The speakers addressed the students and faculty members and gave valuable inputs on opportunities in the field of Data Science and Applied Data Science. The workshop was highly enlightening and the guest speakers informed about the abundant opportunities in data science such as giving solutions to companies, writing a resume with specific reference to some key word and helping in campus selection through online competitions for major companies. The students were briefed about corporate and IT companies which offer jobs to a data scientist.

They also inspired and motivated the students by narrating success stories of founders from non IT background such as WhatsApp and Instagram. According to them a keen sense of observation with specific reference to a pattern is a must and three factors must be kept in mind in order to get a job such as an updated resume, proper communication and have a knack to make the most of an opportunity.

The speakers also spoke at length on Data Hackathon for students. The workshop gave a balanced and monitored concept about the topic. The responsive and reciprocal audience was able to understand the functional aspect of the topic. It is expected that once the students join an organization as a professional, they will be able to integrate the projection within a time-frame and show their capability as a data scientist. After the workshop the students will be able to make optimal use of digital programming and be able to understand the systematized options and policies. The workshop was coordinated by Assistant Professor Anshul Saxena and Dr Vandana Bhagat.