SAS India, the leader in business analytics software and services announced its association with Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) for a two-year full time Master of Science in Data Science (M.Sc. Data Science).

The programme is designed to address the new paradigm of fact-based decision making associated with the advent of Big Data. The program in Data Science starting July 2020, will not only include traditional data analysis skills but also incorporate other crucial skills to perform analysis on big data including data from multimedia sources.
 
The primary objective of the M.Sc. in Data Science program is to develop a skilled professional workforce that is prepared to address the increasing needs in the rapidly expanding area of big data analytics. The program aims to provide skills in quantitative data analysis, data mining, data modeling and prediction, data storage and management, big data processing, data visualization, programming and communication.

SAS based courses/ training and many practical case studies have been integrated in the program to boost the learner confidence and market acceptability. The program also enables the students to obtain SAS global certification and the skills can be ratified and showcased through SAS international certification badges.
 
Bhuvan Nijhawan, Director, Education, SAS Asia Pacific said, “The demand for good data scientist is growing consistently. SAS along with DA-IICT has a firm belief that the future of data science is bright and promising. The newly launched program is a platform that will enable success in skill development, career development and evolution into a data scientist of the future.”
 
Prof. K. S. Dasgupta, Director, DA-IICT said, “The uniqueness of this postgraduate program - MSc in Data Science - is truly multidisciplinary as it is a confluence of disciplines like computer science, mathematical statistics, probability theory, machine learning, data processing and analysis, and visualization.”
 
Prof. Bhaskar Chaudhury, DA-IICT said, “Big Data Analytics will be a 200-billion-dollar market very soon. With enterprises already in the run to hire data scientists and over 10,000 budding AI start-ups, data scientists are in high demand. Organizations need talented individuals capable of solving complex big-data problems who can not only identify various pieces of data but also draw insights from them. There is a huge gap between demand and supply of data scientist, and this discrepancy has made data science a very lucrative career.”
  
The programme is divided into four terms. Throughout the course students will focus on learning optimization concepts, forecasting, AI & Machine Learning algorithms like neural network, deep learning, text analytics, image processing using languages like SAS, R, Python and various emerging technologies - all through problem solving with industry relevant data sets. The students shall thus be readied to take up industry assignments in a company during their summer internship.

The programme is heavily premised on industry interface for which a novel concept of “Industry Associate” is implemented. Select companies/organizations which have been using analytics are associated with the programme as Industry associates. Their analytics experts will constantly interact with students in formal and informal ways and help ensure the programme remains well tuned with industry needs.
 
During these terms, students would be imparted in-depth management knowledge in Data Science area along with relevant analytics course. With this academic preparation, the students would be treated as industry-ready and required to do an internship on an industry project in one of the associate companies for the last term. Only after successful completion of it, they would earn their degrees.