New degree courses in data science to meet growing industry demand: IIT Kanpur Registrar interview

Data Science has emerged as a lucrative career option not only for students, but working professionals as well. Be it an MNC or a small start-up, every company needs a data scientist to refine and understand mountains of data it generates and stores.

Keeping in mind the huge demand for data scientists in the industry, IIT Kanpur announced to offer a new four-year Bachelor of Science (BS) and a five-year Bachelor of Science-Master of Science (BS-MS) degree programmes in Data Science and Statistics.

Shiksha talks to KK Tiwari, Registrar, IIT Kanpur, to understand more about the newly launched programmes.

He says, “The new courses will not only provide students with knowledge about analytics like in computer applications, but also give them a solid understanding of statistics as well. The student will have an opportunity to learn both fundamentals of statistical principles as well as the analytical part of Data Science.”

Courses announced after discussions with industry professionals 

When asked about the motive behind introducing these courses, he says, “IITs reveal their course structure periodically in a systematic manner unlike the university system, which remains under revision for a long time. Some time ago, IIT Kanpur had introduced a BSc programme in Mathematics and Scientific Computing, which was very well taken by the industry and all those houses who produce back-end data because that deals with mathematical as well as computational portion of the computer science area. At that time, it was felt that young students who are coming to the industry should have some formal knowledge about data analytics. We felt that while analysing data, students should not be completely ignorant about the background principles of statistics from where these analytical softwares or applications have been developed.”

He says, “Following discussions with industry leaders, our senate and the board of the institute approved the courses after which these were announced.”

Admission through JEE Advanced only 

On being asked about the fee structure and eligibility for the new courses, he said, “Admission to the programmes will be through Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced. The candidate has to first qualify JEE Main and then JEE Advanced. Fee will remain almost same like other BTech programmes. It will be notified once the programme is launched.”

Students to get chance to interact with experts 

He further says, “Students undergoing the BS and BS-MS programmes in Statistics and Data Science will get an opportunity to interact with well-known industry experts. They will be taught machine learning, artificial intelligence, signal learning, etc. It will open more career opportunities for them as the programmes have been designed based on the increasing demand for data scientists in the industry. If everything remains normal, the course will have a huge demand, but if situation like the Covid pandemic prevails, then that cannot be predicted in advance.”

Faculty for courses yet to be decided 

KK Tiwari says, “We are yet to taken a decision on who will be teaching students enrolled in these courses. There are three main departments – mathematics and statistics, electrical engineering and computer science from where faculty will be selected to teach these courses.”

He says, “Students will be trained on various types of structured and unstructured data with tools that will help them in solving real-life problems. This would include data related to health, banking, communication, etc.”

4 online PG programmes approved too 

“Four online postgraduate programmes have also been approved. These are Cyber Security, Communication Systems, Commodity Markets and Risk Management, Power Sector Regulations, Economics and Management. These courses are flexible and basically for working people. These will be introduced from the next academic session,” he signs off.

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