This week, The Data Lab welcomed our first MSc students cohort.
The Data Lab MSc is a collaborative effort between Robert Gordon University, The University of Dundee, The University of Stirling and The Data Lab. Through this collaboration, each university has developed an MSc programme based on its own strengths and capabilities around Data Science, with the support of The Data Lab to facilitate industry involvement and collaboration, and provide funding and resources.
The Data Lab MSc has been developed with the goal to produce industry ready data scientists, who also have relevant business and scientific knowledge to deliver valuable insights and tangible results. To achieve this, The Data Lab MSc students will have the opportunity to participate in placements and/or industrial dissertation projects in collaboration with companies or technology providers at the end of their programme, facilitated by our partner e-Placement Scotland. During their course, students will also be invited to participate in a series of events and activities that will bring the whole cohort together in different locations across Scotland.
The first of these events took place on 13 October, where we officially launched the programme and brought students from the three universities together for the first time, while giving them an opportunity to hear from industry, academic and public sector experts on how they put data science into action.
We were fortunate to have engaging presentations from our fabulous guest speakers. During the morning, and after providing a brief on The Data Lab and the MSc programme, students heard examples of some of the many applications of data science. Kent McKenzie, Director at Deloitte Scotland provided examples of data science and analytics applied to the financial services sector; Rosa Filgueira from the Data Intensive Research Group at The University of Edinburgh talked about data intensive applications in different fields (like seismology); and Dr. Malcolm Fairweather from SportScotland Institute of Sport gave interesting and practictal examples on how data science can be applied to improve sports performance.
After lunch, students had the opportunity to hear a graduate’s experience from George Theologou, Data Scientist at Skyscanner; and learn about graduate opportunities in the data science work market from Rob Huggins from MBN Solutions. Finally, students came together in a group activity, after which they presented back on their aspirations as future Data Scientists. We closed the day with a fun networking session over a few drinks.
It was a great day, and we look forward to the next one!
Be a part of The Data Lab MSc
The Data Lab Data Lab involvement in this MSc programme aims to foster stronger collaboration within universities and students with the private and public sectors, leveraging on Scotland’s strengths in this area to provide a strong business sense to the course.
If you are interested in shaping the next wave of Data Scientists by being part of our placement and projects programme, or contribute towards future The Data Lab MSc events, please contact us on skills@thedatalab.com.
