The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has launched a lab in collaboration with the American Express. The lab is designed with an objective to focus on research in risk analytics, behavioural sciences with the help of AI and ML.

Data Analytics, Risk, and Technology (DART) lab will focus on risks that originate from human behaviour and decisions. The overarching goal for the lab is to engineer technologies to manage risk by developing a science-based understanding of human’s strength and weaknesses.

The lab aims to establish itself as the world-class hub of research in risk analytics, and behaviour science. American Express has set aside a grant to promote talent and diversity in technology. It has also instituted annual scholarships for economically disadvantaged and meritorious students.

Manoj Adlakha, Senior Vice President and CEO of American Express Banking Corp said, “We are proud to partner with the country’s premier academic institution to invest in the future of cutting-edge data science and analytics research.”

The lab at IIT Madras will explore possibilities of AI and ML in a range of verticals with key emphasis on manufacturing, finance, healthcare, operations management, and smart cities.

IIT Madras’s Director, Bhaskar Ramamurthi said, “he DART Lab will focus on bringing data analytics to bear on problems arising due to the interplay of human factors and inherent risk or uncertainty in the work environment due to unknown or partial information. The scholarships and awards will encourage our women students to excel in STEM and pursue enriching careers at the post-graduate level.”

The research conducted at the lab will develop technologies to measure cognition and attention of decision-makers. The same set of technologies can be applied across dimensions.

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IIT Madras and Forensic Intelligence Surveillance and Security Technologies (FISST) are currently accepting registrations from women for live online courses on data science and big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cyber security, and software engineering. The courses will begin from 23 August and are being conducted as part of the “Career Back 2 Women” program.

The Career Back 2 Women initiative is for women who wish to return to the IT profession, and hence are looking to upskill themselves through new-age technologies. “This CB2Women program is aimed at the women professionals who had a job in the IT industry, but had to leave the same for some reason including pregnancy or taking care of aged parents / in-laws / sick people, etc. to return to IT career with a bang. FISST has a database with over 4 lakh women, in various domains and expressed willingness to get trained into new areas to return to work & earn,” says the Skill Academy IIT Madras website.

Interested women IT professionals can opt for four online courses namely data science and big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cyber security, and software engineering and programming tools. However, prior to that, candidates will have to take a mandatory Back to Tech Track (BTCUBE) IT foundation module and pass the exam to get to any of the specializations they opt to get back to the industry.

The courses are open to women with graduation or diploma (10+2+3) from a recognized university (UGC, AICTE, DEC, AIU or State Government) in any discipline. The duration of the course is four weeks and participants will receive a certificate of completion from IIT Madras. After successfully completing the foundation course, women can opt for the advanced course. Job assistance will also be provided to women after completing advanced modules of selected tracks. Those interested to register for the courses are advised t go through the official website in detail.

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IIT Madras recently announced the launch of the country’s first online BSc degree in Programming and Data Science. The programme is being offered at three levels namely: foundational, diploma, and BSc degree and has two exit options. IIT Madras says that the online offering will address the need of the data science sector, which is one of the fastest-growing sectors that is predicted to create 11.5 million jobs by 2026. Furthermore, online education is a trend being rapidly embraced for high-quality education on a large scale.

Who can Apply for IIT Madras BSc Degree in Data Science?

While the programme is open to anyone from any discipline irrespective of their location in India, the following are the prerequisites for applying for the degree:

1. The candidate must have studied Mathematics and English in class 10.
2. They should have cleared class 12 or equivalent. This year, candidates who are going to complete class 12 will also be allowed to apply.
3. They should be currently enrolled in a Bachelor’s Degree Program or should have graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree (BA, BSc, BE, BTech, BCom, etc.) or they may have dropped out from a Bachelor’s degree.
4. Working professionals can also take up the programme.

When to Apply for IIT Madras BSc Degree in Data Science?

The official website says that the date of the online application will be announced shortly, and the process may end tentatively by 15 September 2020. Weekly release of Term 1 qualifier course content may start from 5 October 2020. Participants will need to have access to the following to take the course:

1. Access to a good internet connection as well as a laptop or desktop device.
2. Learners should be able to travel to assigned exam centres for quizzes and exams, each term.

This unique online offering will be offered in three different stages – Foundational Programme, Diploma Programme and Degree Programme. At each stage, students will have the freedom to exit from the program and receive a Certificate, Diploma or a Degree, respectively, from IIT Madras.

Based on the eligibility, interested candidates will have to fill a form and pay a nominal fee of Rs. 3,000 for the qualifier exam. Learners will get access to the 4 weeks of course content of 4 subjects (Mathematics, English, Statistics and Computational Thinking). These students will go through the course lectures online, submit online assignments and write an in-person qualifier exam at the end of 4 weeks. Those who wish to know more about the course are advised to go through the official website in detail.

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Chennai-based technology institute IIT-Madras will collaborate in a project backed by search giant Google to develop AI-driven systems to predict engagement and churn in a phone-based information system meant for expectant mothers.

IIT Madras has tied up with Google for its “AI for Social Good” initiative and will handle two projects with accredited NGOs in the country, Balaraman Ravindran, who heads the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI at IIT Madras, told ET on Monday.

Another novel initiative that the institute is working on in collaboration with a team from AI4Bharat is for the NGO Storyweaver which is a digital repository that provides easy-to-use tools to read, create, adapt, and translate new stories for children in their mother tongue. The team from IIT Madras is being led by Mitesh Khapra and Pratyush Kumar and looks to build open-source input tools for underserved Indian languages to accelerate publishing of openly licensed content.

Google had announced that it would support six research projects led by organizations from India and across Asia with expertise in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, and other deep learning techniques, in addition to funding and computational resources. The goal is to provide NGOs with technology that will enable them to address societal, humanitarian and environmental challenges using Artificial Intelligence.

The two Indian institutes that are participating in this project are IIT Madras and IIIT Delhi. IIT Madras is looking to use AI to help the NGO Armman to build predictive models that could prevent those who enrol for the healthcare programme from dropping out.

“One of the biggest challenges when you go outside metros in India is that there are a lot of superstitions (guiding pregnancy),” Dr Balaraman said. “People have no clear idea of what are the right processes, the correct progression, things to watch out for in early neo natal care and so on. A lot of information is avaialble online in English but even if people in rural areas are able to get online on their phones, they are not able to find information in a form that is accessible to them.”

The NGO works with expectant and mothers of newborns and has devised a model wherein those who enrol or the programme receive phone calls to improve targeted interventions and increase positive healthcare outcomes for mothers and their babies.

“The number of women who are enrolled in the programme is not a tiny number but we are trying to find out how many are truly engaged,” he said. “The predictive model will tell you things like how many calls will a woman answer before dropping out of the programme based on a variety of factors such as age, other demographic factors and their call behaviour like how long they listen to the first phone call.”

He said this could also help with making inferences that could help with understanding what kind of other interventions would be required. These could be having a human call when a woman is not engaging on a recorded call or even having an Asha worker visiting the family to check on the woman. However, he said doing this for everyone was neither scalable nor feasible.

In a blog post on the Google India page on February 13, Manish Gupta, Director, Google Research Team in India and Milind Tambe, Director AI for Social Good, Google Research Team, India spoke about how they believe AI can tackle some of the biggest issues that we face today.

“Healthcare, conservation, education, and disaster prediction are some of the most difficult challenges of our time. As computer scientists, it’s incredibly humbling and exciting to partner with the community towards making a positive impact for people in India and around the world,” they said.

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The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) faculty are offering affordable courses on data science through their platform ‘PadhAI’, it said on Tuesday.

They are launching an online self-paced course on foundations of data science, which covers from beginners’ level, the mathematical and programming skills required for a data scientist.

This five-month course is affordably priced at Rs 1,000 for students and faculty members, the Institute said in a statement.

“With PadhAI, for us it is Nation first. One primary goal is to ensure that every college student in our country in engineering, science, or commerce disciplines receives an accessible and foundational understanding of data science,” said Mitesh Khapra, Co-Founder, One Fourth Labs – an IIT Madras incubated Start-up.

“Often data science is taught in an isolation, and separated from the advanced and more popular topics of machine learning and deep learning. We are working towards bridging this gap with a unified series of courses across these topics,” Khapra added.

According to the Institute, there is rising demand for trained data scientists across most industries such as manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, education and IT.

To step-up to this demand, an increasing number of professionals and students are looking for good quality data science courses.

However, most courses are expensively priced ranging from tens of thousands to even lakhs of rupees, thereby putting a heavy premium on acquiring skills towards this lucrative career path.

The courses in PadhAI are designed towards providing foundational insight. The PadhAI course on data science begins on 1st February 2020 and is accepting enrolments at padhai.onefourthlabs.in.

The professors are expecting to follow-up this course on data science with subsequent affordably priced courses on Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

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CHENNAI: With the first batch of 30 students of the Inter-Disciplinary Dual Degree (IDDD) programme on Data Science, of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, all set to complete their course, the Institute has decided to increase the number of seats of the programme, said a statement issued by the Institute.

IIT Madras had introduced the programme in 2015 with an aim to tackle the shortage of data scientists in the country. Looking at the rising demand of data science among students and industries, the institute has decided to increase the number of seats in the programme. Officials in IIT-M said soon, a decision will be taken on the exact number of seats.

“Owing to the positive response from the industry as well as demand from the students, we are planning to almost double the number of seats in IDDD Data Science,” said the statement.

The students will have a Bachelor’s degree in the major they opted for when they joined, as well as a Master’s degree in Data Science, enabling them to apply their Data Science skills to solve problems in their parent discipline. This is a one-of-its-kind interdisciplinary programme in the country, providing students with a strong foundation in both, their parent discipline, as well as frontier areas of data science. The graduating students are uniquely trained to fulfil the rapidly increasing need for data science and artificial intelligence professionals in the Indian industry, said the statement.

Speaking about the programme’s importance, B Ravindran, the course coordinator said, “Data Science is greatly impacting every discipline and the graduates of this programme, who, by virtue of their interdisciplinary training, are well equipped to be leaders in a digital world.”

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