THE FIRST GRADUATES OF THE YESSENOV DATA LAB

— This profession is rare, but not just fashionable, it is in demand, including in Kazakhstan. During the 8-week study, working professionals have learned to collect information, to process and visualize data, and to work with image recognition and neural networks, — said the Program Manager of the Foundation – Ilzira Aldagarova.

The lecturers of the school were high level experts in the field.  Among those who shared their knowledge with Kazakhstanis were experts of international companies with extensive experience in data analytics: EPAM Systems, AGT International and Yandex.Money. Professors and PhDs Kuanysh Abeshev and Timur Bakibayev lectured the introductory week for students of the school. The winners of the national competition held this spring became the participants of the school; 118 people claimed the right to participate free in the school. Among students there were representatives of eight cities of Kazakhstan; seven participants of school were girls.

— I didn’t even expect the school to be so productive. Each lecturer had its own features. The general impression is that I have made great progress in practical skills, understood the details, tried them in solving several real problems. And now I’m even thinking about starting my own business related to Data Science — shares her impressions the Yessenov Data Lab student Maria Lipchanskaya (Petropavlovsk).

The data analyst, lecturer of the school Dmitry Russanov (EPAM Systems, Russia) told us what he considers the most valuable moment of the past two months:
— Representatives of different companies came to our school, offered their cases for solutions, and they turned out to be very similar to the tasks that I gave to students. Their level of mathematical knowledge, of course, should be improved. But now they know what they have to work on. And most importantly, the students have the confidence that they can implement the new knowledge in real life. Which, subsequently, will make them a high value candidates in the market.

According to available information, representatives of local businesses are very interested in all graduates;some have already received a job offer, while the rest are in negotiation with potential employers.

— Each day offers new opportunities for application of the skills that we have taught the students. Like autonomous driving, for example.  We say that computers will replace all of us soon, and we will have no jobs to do. But it will turn out just the opposite: we will replace all the mechanical work [with computers], while humans will have the most interesting and complex tasks, — says computer vision specialist, lecturer of the school Dmitry Kotovenko (AGT International, Germany).

According to foundation’s founder Galimzhan Yessenov, in connection with the successful conduct of the school this year and the growing demand for the specialty of Data Analytics in our country, the foundation will organize a similar school in the summer of 2019. Yessenov Data Lab 2018 was organized by the Shakhmardan Yessenov Science and Education Foundation jointly with Almaty Management University (AlmaU) and in partnership with Kaspi Bank.