IIT Hyd to conduct part time Executive M Tech in data science

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Hyderabad is launching a new Executive M.Tech programme in data science, exclusively for industry professionals from next academic year (August 2015).
The programme is self-paced so that candidates have flexibility in completing it in 2-4 years, IIT Hyderabad said in a statement.
The programme would provide participants with the knowledge and essential skills needed to address the challenges of data intensive decision-making environments, it said.
"This is a case-study based course that will help participants get extensive hands-on training using the open source R statistical software. This programme is exclusively designed to cater to the needs of working individuals, wherein a candidate is expected to do twelve 2-credit courses over a period of 2-4 years.

"Ideally, one can take 3 courses per semester. The classes will be held over the weekends (or other timings suitable for working professionals) with each class having a 3-hour duration," the statement said.
IIT Hyderabad noted that there are many industries such as healthcare, insurance, e-commerce, transport, banking, telecommunications and social media, that are producing massive amounts of data, the so-called "BIG DATA", with Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity and Value (the five "V"s of Big Data challenges) at an unprecedented scale.
"This has led to a critical need for skilled professionals, popularly known as data scientists, who can mine and interpret the data. Making sense of this massive data poses challenges for scientific, technological and industrial disciplines. Unfortunately, most undergraduate programmes are too generic and existing postgraduate programmes do not focus explicitly on data science.

The Executive M.Tech programme is aimed to bridge this gap, it was stated.