The amount of digital data generated in a single year completely overwhelms our capacity to manage it, understand it and, more importantly, mine it. This phenomenon is known as the Data Deluge.
Data scientists are specialists, normally having a strong background in computing, statistics, and machine learning, who use their skills and expertise to find patterns and trends in data that can be used to make better strategic and tactical decisions.
In many ways, being a data scientist is like being a detective. It involves skill, knowledge, expertise, creativity, great attention to detail, and most of all, perseverance. The ultimate aim is to determine trends, find hidden patterns, and obtain business insight from the data. Companies use data analytics to make better business decisions and outperform their competitors. The worldwide demand for data scientists has never been so high. The work data scientists do, and the value they add to business, industry and academia, is invaluable and will lead to many new innovations as we enter the fourth, data-driven, industrial revolution. Data has become ubiquitous and data scientists are now at the forefront of this revolution. There has never been a better time to study data science.
The Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta is launching a new MSc in Data Science. The new programme starts in October 2022 and will be offered on a part-time basis. Lectures will be held in the evenings with half of them delivered on campus while the rest online.
The programme is spread over three academic years, where in the first two years students will cover topics in core mathematics and statistics, data science, and machine learning. The third year is dedicated to a dissertation that will focus on solving a real problem.
To create awareness on data science, the Data Science Platform (DSP) and the Faculty of ICT are also organising the first Data Science Summer School. These sessions will take place in the afternoons over a period of two weeks from July 18 to 29 at the Msida campus.
This school will comprise a series of theoretical and practical workshops covering the methods and technologies currently used in data science as well as an overview of the state-of-the-art tools employed by data scientists. The school is targeted at university students as well as industry practitioners and professionals who want to learn more about this exciting new area.
For more information about the new MSc in Data Science, visit here or e-mail ict@um.edu.mt.
For more information about the first Data Science Summer School, visit here or e-mail ict@um.edu.mt.
Carl James Debono is Dean of the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta.
Sound Bites
• Scientists have, for the first time, grown plants in soil from the moon. They used soil collected during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions. In their experiment, the researchers wanted to know if plants would grow in lunar soil and, if so, how the plants would respond to the unfamiliar environment, even down to the level of gene expression.
• As Earth’s climate continues to warm, researchers predict wild animals will be forced to relocate their habitats – likely to regions with large human populations – dramatically increasing the risk of a viral jump to humans that could lead to the next pandemic. This link between climate change and viral transmission is described by an international research team led by scientists at Georgetown University and is published on April 28 in Nature.
For more soundbites listen to Radio Mocha every Saturday at 7.30pm on Radju Malta and the following Monday at 9pm on Radju Malta 2 https://www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.
DID YOU KNOW?
• ‘D’ä e å, å i åa ä e ö’ is a Swedish dialectal phrase that means ‘There is a stream, and in the stream there is an island’.
• We have been calling ‘Machu Picchu’ the wrong thing for more than 100 years. The mountain citadel was more likely known to the Inca as ‘Huayna Picchu’.
• A 1985 study found that couples in relationships could remember things better than randomly assigned pairs of people.
• According to a Stanford University study, children’s brains start tuning out their mother’s voice at the age of 13.
• The chandeliers in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque contain ostrich eggs in order to repel spiders and prevent cobwebs.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think.