In this Accredian Spotlight interview, we feature Rupinder Kohli, a Lead QA Engineer at Keriton. Her insatiable quest for knowledge and upskilling led her to enroll in the Post Graduate Program in Data Science & Artificial Intelligence.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Rupinder: I am a part of the PGP in Data Science and AI, March 2020 batch. I’m currently working for a startup, Keriton based out of the US.
I am responsible for testing the products that we are building. To be able to perform better, my role demands understanding Data and being able to weave a story of how our users are using our product, identifying the potential issues that our customers are facing. I also need to understand the various workflows our customers perform and how we can optimize them.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Rupinder: Since the beginning of my career I’ve been interested in Data and metrics; be it the number of features developed, productivity, test coverage, and sensitive areas of the application. Over the last few years with the availability of humongous amounts of data, I’ve been exploring this space to be able to use and process the raw data for better insights that I could use for my professional advancement, and hence I decided to enroll in a program at Accredian.
Question 3: What tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered at Accredian so far?
Rupinder: So far, I have used Python-based packages like Pandas, Numpy, Sklearn for Data analysis, and Seaborn for Visualizations. I’m also using Exploratory Data Analysis on raw data to build basic prediction or classification models.
Question 4: What challenges did you face when you started your Data Science journey and how did you overcome it?
Rupinder: Being a non-coder it was difficult to write code snippets to perform basic functions, however practice and reading various blogs or referring to Kaggle was very helpful. Realized that by just practicing the coding skills and logical thinking I was able to overcome initial challenges.
Question 5: Who is your favorite faculty at Accredian and what did you learn from them?
Rupinder: The Accredian faculty are experts in their subjects. Over the various modules, I have been taught by Suchit Majumdar, Neelmani, Deepesh, and Subhodeep; each one of them has its unique style of teaching leaving a permanent mark on my learnings.
Question 6: What is the goal of Data Science?
Rupinder: The goal of Data Science is to extract business insights from structured and unstructured Data, helping businesses and individuals to reach their goals and perform better.
Question 7: How has Data Science evolved in the last few years?
Rupinder: Data is the new oil, which can actually be experienced. Data Science is being extensively used across organizations and domains. Be it a startup or an established organization, teams have been formed to apply Data Science taking them from being data-poor to a data-rich organization and thereby leveraging customer engagement.
And the pandemic has further extrapolated the need and growth to apply both Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in education. For primary grades examination AI invigilation of students is being used.
Question 8: What current trends in Data Science are you most excited about?
Rupinder: As per Gartner, Data and analytics combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies will be paramount in the effort to predict, prepare and respond in a proactive and accelerated manner to a global crisis and its aftermath. These trends can already be visualized in domains like supply chain, health care, education, etc.
Question 9: Which Data Science blogs do you follow?
Rupinder: I mostly refer to Towards Data Science, Medium, Geeks for Geeks, and Analytics Vidhya. Recently, I got my hands on the various Machine Learning podcasts and love tuning to them.
Question 10: What advice would you give to a beginner in Data Science?
Rupinder: My advice would be to practice Python and perform extensive EDA on Datasets.
Hope you enjoyed reading this interview. If you want to read more such interesting student stories, check out Accredian Spotlight.
