Meet Master student Aisja: “We tackle real-world problems using actual data sets, not simulated ones.”
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Meet Aisja. Aisja is currently a Master’s student in Data Science in Business and Entrepreneurship at JADS. In this interview, she explains why she chose this Master’s program, her favorite course and an example of a case she worked on during the Master’s. In addition, she shares what she did outside the curriculum ad her most memorable moments at JADS. Don’t forget to also scroll down to watch the video of Aisja where she shares more experiences with JADS!
What is your background?
“I studied Econometrics, so I do have a background in data science, but it is not the most elaborate. I also worked as a data science consultant for a short period of time.”
Why did you choose this master?
“The JADS Master of Data Science in Business and Entrepreneurship really offered a beginning to end experience of talking to a company and making sure that you understand their business problems, applying data science to solve those business problems and then being able to explain the results to the companies as well. I really appreciated that and it sounded very nice. It was something I wanted to do in my career, so also learn about.”
What is your favorite course?
“My favorite course is Natural Language Processing. It’s very up-to-date and accurate towards what’s happening right now. They’re also updating the curriculum towards everything with ChatGPT and large language models, which is a very hot topic. It is also very interesting to learn about and to apply to real business cases. I’m now also working in my thesis with natural language processing and it’s something I want to pursue as well in my career later.”
What did you do at JADS outside the curriculum?
“I was part of the organization team for Data Science Days and we organized the talent fair past June (2023). It is a fair where companies with open vacancies gather, providing an opportunity to connect students with these companies for thesis internships, working student roles, or student jobs. I also helped organizing the DEX a few weeks ago (2023), which is a very large scale event in which data scientists can explore the field, learn about various companies, and discover career opportunities available for those with a Bachelor’s or Master’s in data science.”
What was your most memorable moment at JADS so far?
“The most memorable thing I experienced at JADS are the people in the community, for example, being together with everyone, supporting everyone working on projects and learning how to work together. Also really interesting business cases that they allowed me to do here, work with actual companies and solve actual problems that the companies do have instead of just working with simulated data and pretending like you’re solving a real world problem.”
Can you give an example of a case you worked on?
“Yes, it was for the course Data Consultancy in Action and a company had a lot of documents and they wanted to be able to map through those documents to see which entities worked together on specific topics. So we applied topic modelling, natural language processing and network theory to that particular case to create a network of documents for them. They are actually planning to use it in the future implementation of their tool, so that’s pretty cool.”
What is the most unique thing about JADS?
“In my eyes the most unique things about JADS are two things. One is the building which is a very pretty old monastery Chapel with little details everywhere. Second is, what I mentioned before, the fact that you can experience the process from beginning to end and that the program provides you with real business cases rather than fake data sets. It’s more like they present a company to you, they have a problem and JADS is going to help you to help them solve that problem.”
What are your future plans?
“When I’m done with this Masters, I want to continue being a data science consultant. I really think the experience I gained here at JADS can help me do that, because we do learn a lot about talking to companies and solving data science problems.”
Why should someone chose this master?
“Someone should choose this Master if they’re interested in data science, but also in the business aspect. There are a lot of data science masters out there, but as long as you just remain technical and theoretical, you will not know how to really apply it within a business or if you want to start your own business. I really think if you want to learn about data science and how to apply it in a real world setting, this Master at JADS is a very good one.”
