With the rising demand from the corporate sector for candidates skilled in Data Science stream, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, is all set to introduce a four-year interdisciplinary Bachelor of Science programme in Data Science and Engineering (DSE) from this academic year.
“Modern research is moving towards technology. For instance, Biotechnology is a combination of various branches of Science and technology such as molecular biology, bio-engineering and biomedical engineering. Hence, it is an obvious decision for the institute to launch tech-driven programs despite being known for science courses and research,” said Siva Umapathy, director, IISER Bhopal.
The purpose of the program is to train the fresh UG students in the field of their interest which will allow them to carry forward their niche areas of study to master’s or Ph.D. level which in turn will improve their employability.
“Usually companies have to train students after the recruitment because the study programs are not in sync with the industry. Students of the BS programme will have an option to work with companies in their fourth year of coursework to develop industry skills,” said Umapathy.
For the first two years, candidates will be exposed to the university level science and engineering courses and during the last two year, they will be trained in specialized courses in Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Applied Mathematics, advanced statistics and modeling coupled with computational techniques which they will be to utilize in the various field of engineering and science.
Some of the areas where students can utilize their newly learned skills are:
bioinformatics, drug discovery, smart materials, biomedical applications, climate modeling, computational material science, econometrics, natural language processing, social networks and financial markets.
“The applications of the coursework are aplenty. From the development of intelligent robots to a data-centric approach to economics to help the government in designing the fiscal policies in a more prudent manner, everything functions on data. Exponentially increasing dependence on data will require students to have a better understanding of social networks and data-driven computational methods to stay relevant in the job market,” added Umapathy.