In his 13 years of career in IT, Santhosh Kumar has always been working with data. So, to enhance his skills further in data interpretation, data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, he enrolled for the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI) program at Accredian.
In this article, let’s see his take on data science and how his learning experience has been at Accredian
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Santhosh: I’m part of the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI) program, June 2020 batch, and I’m working as an ETL Lead in which I assist a pharmaceutical client to extract, transform, and load data, which I fetch from multiple sources. I load the data into the target database and target applications based on a couple of business logics given by the client.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Santhosh: I have 13+ years of experience in the IT industry, where I got a chance to work on Oracle’s integration technologies.
We seamlessly integrate multiple applications providing ease for the applications to make changes without hampering the target applications. Apart from this, I also have done data migration, where we migrated data from different sources to a target based on specific business logic.
I have been working with data throughout my career and want to prosper in the field of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. I am eager to build my career around predicting analytics and making models using data. These are the driving forces for my initial steps towards data science and machine learning.
Question 3: What all tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered in your Data Science & AI program at Accredian so far?
Santhosh: I got hands-on experience in Python and a couple of essential packages used for visualizing, like Seaborn, Matplotlib, GG plot, etc. I have also started working on multiple machine learning packages.
Question 4: What are some initial challenges when you got started on your Data Science journey, and how did you overcome them?
Santhosh: Time management was one of my biggest challenges at the beginning of the program. Other than that, I also didn’t have an idea about the real-time implementations of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Accredian helped me to not just schedule my timings but also how I can allocate an hour daily for studying the concepts taught in class. Gradually the study increased from one to three hours.
I learnt about the practical implementations of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence across businesses. The industry insights and guidance sessions at Accredian helped me a lot to get a clear picture of the real world issues and its solutions in data science.
Question 5: Who is your favorite faculty at Accredian, and what did you learn from him the Most?
Santhosh: My favorite faculty at Accredian is Suchit. He has in-depth knowledge on various data science and ML concepts because of which he can explain so well and in such lucid language that everyone understands. He gives examples of real-world scenarios and explains the usage or implementation of data science.
For example, when one of my classmates asked how data science or ML can help in his work, he simply asked his field of work and gave him an example explaining in his business terms how it can be helpful. So, Suchit really knows how to comment on any subject at hand and engage students in class and explain concepts with ease.
Question 6: What is the goal of Data Science?
Santhosh: The goal of data science is to analyze data provided by the customer, offer insights to them based on the provided data and suggest solutions for the growth of his business.
Question 7: In your view, how has Data Science evolved in the last few years?
Santhosh: The term data science was once used by very few people as there were very few companies implementing or using them. But in the last few years, many companies understood the multiple benefits of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications in their business, which in turn increased its demand in the market and soon became a buzzword.
Question 8: What are the current trends in Data Science that you are most excited about?
Santhosh: The current data science trends that I’m most excited about are analyzing data and providing insights and predictions in the farming, medicine, and retail industry.
Question 9: Which are some of the blogs that you follow?
Santhosh: I follow all articles on data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence on Medium and AnalyticsVidhya.
Question 10: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Data Science?
Santhosh: I would advise all data science aspirants to start your journey immediately. Data is new oil fueling the radical transformation and ascension of the world. Learn about the concepts involved in data science. Don’t just read articles on the web but enroll in a formal data science course where you will get professional guidance.
This was a conversation with one of our GCDAI students – Santhosh Kumar BVSRK.
Read more such interesting and inspiring student interviews at Accredian Spotlight.
