YouTube recommendations to purchases on Amazon, data is everywhere. If you have a curious mind, you could well find a career in data science.

A panel of experts discussed Tomorrow’s Tech for Tomorrow’s Careers: Big Data, AI, IoT and ML at CampusToCareer 2020, a free ongoing webinar series by ABP Education, on September 1.

The speakers for the session were Prof. Ajoy Kumar Ray of JIS Institute of Advanced Studies and Research, Sudip Majumder of Oracle Corporation US, Arun Kumar Ray of Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Angshuman Ghosh of Grab and Charanpreet Singh of Praxis Business School Foundation.

The virtual discussion was moderated by Nandan Sengupta of Cambridge Marketing College, UK.

Catch the session? click here

Here's what the speakers had to say:

Prof. Ajoy Kumar Ray, Director, JIS Institute of Advanced Studies and Research

By 2025, there will be 75 billion IoT devices in the world and 463 exabytes of data will created daily. This data explosion has simultaneously given rise to the need to analyse huge volumes of data fast, and that is where machine intelligence comes in. Another area of interest spawned by this process is data security. Together, these fields make up data science.

With 5G expected to be rolled out across the world in a few years, data transmission speed will go up even more and latency will go down. As more data is created, storage and analysis will be a problem. No wonder, by the end of this year, job listings for data science and analytics are expected to reach around 2.7 million.

The dramatic rise in demand for data professionals can be attributed to a change in the nature of data, from structured to largely unstructured. Data holds not only numerical values or text, but images, audio, video, graphs, and all kinds of signals. The reasonable way to process this volume is by distributing the work among multiple devices that can be operated simultaneously. With all our gadgets connected through the internet, and data sharing becoming the need of the hour, cloud computing has assumed great importance.

Data has impacted our daily lives. For instance, IoT-enabled healthcare systems are helping in the early detection of diseases and facial recognition software is changing photography. The technology of tomorrow will become smarter. A time will come when AI will write the code for you, according to the algorithm you propose.

With so much data being collected, data mining and data security have become areas of concern, giving rise to opportunities in cybersecurity.

We have already entered the digital era. You need the mentality to embrace this digital world passionately and learn as much as you can through various courses. Data science has many areas to specialise in, all interrelated and interdisciplinary. All you need is an analytical mind and innovative ideas. There is no alternative to hard labour, and combined with unlimited resources available on the Internet, you can definitely shine in this field.

Sudip Majumder, Distinguished Engineering Adviser, Oracle Corporation US

In spite of the gloomy economic conditions, there has never been a better time to be young and kicking. The onus is on you, and if you have the passion and work hard, things will work out. Anyone with a logical and analytical mindset, coupled with rational thinking, can do a fantastic job in programming.

Businesses are changing, and according to industry trends, customer experience is key. For any company to survive, it needs to provide customers with a frictionless experience. Companies must position themselves differently from competition, and provide something extra. They also need to be proactive and clearly define their services, besides being agile enough to capture market opportunities.

Ever since the iPhone came along, the internet goes with us everywhere, and we are constantly connected and sharing. This is in sharp contrast to the dial-up modems, which were the only device not too long ago. This shows how fast-changing the industry is. Every hour, 175,000 smartphones are sold, 23 Pbytes of mobile data traffic are consumed, and 2.7 billion WhatsApp texts are exchanged. Unless you can monetize this aspect, you can't get a job.

Customers want all possible facilities. Technology is changing rapidly and adoption is fast. The only solution is constant education. No one discipline can isolate itself anymore, because everyone wants to leverage each other to get ahead.

Data is the new capital for businesses and it can disrupt existing structures. Just like refined oil has five times more potential value than oil, analytics (refined data) has five times the value of standard data, giving a business a kinetic boost. Every government in the world is looking inwards, and trying to create within. Here, IoT will come into the picture, especially in the case of building smart cities, healthcare, education. Industries have changed permanently because of COVID, and this digital efficiency has given individuals the opportunity to hold multiple jobs.

IoT is the ability to turn anything into a smart object, and it has four broad areas to specialise in. IoT devices require an understanding of hardware and embedded software, followed by wireless networking to form a gateway coordinating between the devices and/or the cloud. This requires knowledge of a programming language. The third zone is the cloud platform, which involves the study of processing and database, and in this case, a certification in the same is often essential. The last of these areas is analytics, which requires a strong knowledge of statistics, mathematics, economics and operations research.

If you want to pursue this sector, you should follow a certain thought process. It is important to understand that anyone can get educated, and one should never stop learning. This acquired knowledge should enable one to act upon the data. To get acquainted with the field, you must get your hands dirty, and do projects while having fun. It is also essential to temper expectations for your first few projects, and start off with something simple.

Prof. Arun Kumar Ray, Director, School of Electronics Engineering, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT)

In India, IoT has still not penetrated the rural areas and there is room for a lot of work, especially in smart healthcare, agriculture and education.

We can go beyond the abundant smart home and wearable device applications developed in the recent past and do more. The challenges and issues include security, quality of service, interoperability, interface management, resource control and energy awareness. With a large volume of data being coming in, invasion of privacy needs to be prevented. Creating suitable algorithms and models is important for this. Research in IoT has shown that we have moved from actor-based data to event-based to cloud-based, and finally, to service-based data. In this era of connected intelligence, AI and ML have come to our rescue and helped analyse large volumes of unstructured data.

When we think of the future, we talk about automation in every aspect of life, but that is misleading. The future belongs in autonomous or near-autonomous systems. Intuitive AI will be the next focus, because it helps us understand, believe, elaborate and trust. Future generations will focus most of their research on AI-driven analytics. Computing will also move to quantum computing, AI accelerators and quantum AI, which are all disruptive technologies that have the ability to adapt to new needs, thus helping create many new jobs.

Dr. Angshuman Ghosh, Data Scientist, Grab

The term data scientist started catching on from 2012, and it has become one of the most popular and lucrative professions globally in the past four years. This career is now picking up in India, too, because of this pandemic.

Data science is growing fast because we have a lot of data through IoT and social media, cheap storage aided by cheap and fast processing, and readily available, free and open source tools like Python.

Students of data science can find job opportunities in technology, retail, finance, telecom and pharma sectors. They can become business analysts, data analysts, business intelligence analysts or Data/ML engineers.

The key skills for a career in data science are strong bases in mathematics and statistics, computer science technologies like Python/R/SQL to program and process data, domain knowledge of the sector you work in and communication skills to work effectively in a team, and convince people that your model is both viable and valuable.

Charanpreet Singh, Founder and Director, Praxis Business School Foundation

Technology improves the quality of our lives. Be it our socio-cultural environment, schooling, healthcare, housing, or anything else, technology improves it. If you take up a career in tech, you are actually doing a service to mankind.

Technology offers us speed, affordability, convenience, reliability, connectivity and access. The cost of everything comes down, and we can do things better. Tomorrow’s tech has to address global issues like climate change, dangers to the environment, inequality, health and hunger.

Today’s tech is using deep learning to produce human-like text, enabling machine control through thoughts and manipulating an organism’s genes through bio-tech. You can go from being a technophobe to a technophile, and be anything from a beginner to an advanced operator of tech, and still make a career in technology. You can fit in anywhere from data familiar to data fluent to providing data leadership. All you have to be is curious, diligent and a problem-solver. You can either be a data engineer, who is instrumental in making data available, work in cybersecurity and make data secure, or devote your efforts to data science and analyse data to draw insights.

In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, we need to have the ability and courage to learn quickly. We need to be critical thinkers, approaching every problem from all directions. Technology is changing very fast, and if we do not move with the trend, we will become obsolete.

We need to be capable learners, critical thinkers and effective communicators who are also good listeners. Moreover, to ensure that AI is unbiased and ethical, you must be transparent.

As long as you are good with numbers and comfortable with technology, it does not matter which background you are from. Data science can be taught. What cannot be taught is curiosity, the passion for problem-solving and the right attitude. There are a lot of programmes, both full-time and part-time in India and abroad for people who want to add to their data science knowledge.

Nandan Sengupta, College Ambassador for India, Cambridge Marketing College, UK

Any emerging tech has its core use and its augmented areas. For technologies of today, the areas of augmentation are similar, apart from its core areas.

Technologies are emerging every day, all very innovative. You will probably have to treat yourself as ever-ready learners, and as soon as you see a new concept, be ready to learn it. Nothing is anybody’s specific discipline these days. This is the core of permeable knowledge. Degrees and qualifications are not the ultimate. If you can do something very well with great understanding, even if you are not from the discipline, you will still have opportunities.

Leonardo da Vinci was an engineer and artist who also had an in-depth knowledge of physics, social science and painting, among other things. Knowledge of different disciplines will need to be integrated into every mind in order to help everyone make the most of these new technologies.

Every technology is aimed at improving the quality of life. Our experience is what matters to all businesses. Whenever any organisation is dealing with people, they depend on the ability to reach them precisely, in a targeted way. Earlier, this target segment could be narrowed down to 1000 people at most, but today the target can be one person, due to the precision of data.

If you can learn without thinking too much about your qualifications and apply yourself, you will be a successful professional in whatever field you choose.