The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has launched the ‘AI Foundation for Faculty Development’ program through its Centre of Excellence for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (CoE DS&AI) and FutureSkills platform. With a view to democratise AI learning, the Faculty Development Program offers a comprehensive schedule, which aims to provide the faculty in AI with the necessary exposure to real-life business problems by working closely with industry experts and providing access to latest tools and technologies in the AI space.
The program will be delivered as an integrated platform consisting of 125 hours of learning including approximately 100 hours of self-paced online learning in areas of Predictive Modelling, Programming Languages, Time Series Forecasting, Machine Learning, Optimization Techniques, Visualization, Natural Language Processing and Image & Video Analytics. This online component will be delivered through the NASSCOM FutureSkills platform which brings together the best-in-class global learning and content providers to offer learners free and deep learning content in emerging technologies such as AI. Upon successful completion of the online learning, the participating faculty will be required to undergo 25 hours of hands-on, lab-based training by industry experts and academic partners on cutting-edge business problems. Post the hands-on lab based training, the participants will be certified by NASSCOM.
Sharing his delight on the launch of the program, Amit Aggarwal, CEO Future Skills, NASSCOM said, “As adoption of Automation and Artificial Intelligence builds momentum across the world, millions of people worldwide will have to upgrade their skills. The skills that were once relevant are no longer going to be effective enough for a dynamic career. Addressing the skills gap requires a calibrated approach and reskilling of faculty is one of the critical drivers for this change. Through this programme, we hope to co-create a faculty development ecosystem that strengthens our ability to prepare our students for jobs of the future.”
The objective of this initiative is to develop an ecosystem of world-class faculty in the AI Space, which translates into world-class talent who are ready to be absorbed by the industry into their workforce. The program will be launched initially for technical colleges and universities of Karnataka and will expand across the country eventually. As part of this program, NASSCOM CoE – DSAI aims to upskill nearly 2000 faculty members in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning through multiple interventions and impact nearly 25,000 undergraduates pursuing AI related courses.
It is expected that the data science and artificial intelligence industry in India (IT and non-IT industries) will be worth US $16 billion by 2025. As per a recent study by NASSCOM, there will be a likely shortage of around 2,38,000 data science & artificial intelligence professionals over the next three years in the country.