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Curriculum Overview

The Data Science program at Alard University Pune follows a carefully crafted academic structure that evolves from foundational knowledge to advanced specialization over four years. The curriculum integrates core sciences, programming skills, data analytics, and domain-specific applications to create well-rounded professionals ready for the workforce.

The curriculum includes both core and elective components designed to build a comprehensive understanding of data science principles and applications. Core courses provide essential theoretical knowledge, while electives allow students to specialize in areas aligned with their career interests.

Advanced Departmental Elective Courses

Several advanced departmental electives are offered to deepen student understanding in specialized domains:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): This course explores text processing techniques, sentiment analysis, language modeling, and transformer architectures. Students work with large-scale NLP datasets and develop models for machine translation, question answering, and summarization.
• Computer Vision and Image Recognition: Students learn to apply convolutional neural networks (CNNs), object detection algorithms, image segmentation techniques, and generative models like GANs. Practical labs involve analyzing medical images, satellite imagery, and surveillance footage.
• Time Series Forecasting: The course focuses on forecasting methods for temporal data, including ARIMA, exponential smoothing, LSTM networks, and seasonal decomposition techniques. Applications include stock market prediction, demand forecasting, and climate modeling.
• Deep Reinforcement Learning: This advanced module covers reinforcement learning frameworks, policy gradients, Q-learning, and multi-agent systems. Students experiment with environments like Atari games and robotic control tasks.
• Advanced Data Mining Techniques: Covers association rule mining, clustering algorithms, anomaly detection, and feature selection methods. Labs include analyzing social media networks and detecting fraudulent transactions.
• Privacy-Preserving Data Analytics: Students study differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and regulatory compliance frameworks. Projects involve designing systems that protect sensitive data while enabling useful analytics.
• Financial Risk Analytics: Focuses on risk measurement tools, portfolio optimization, credit scoring models, and derivative pricing using stochastic methods. Includes case studies from global financial institutions.
• Healthcare Data Analytics: Explores applications of data science in public health, genomics, clinical decision support, and drug discovery. Students analyze EHR datasets and develop predictive models for patient outcomes.
• Environmental Data Modeling: Involves modeling climate change impacts, biodiversity monitoring, pollution prediction, and sustainable resource planning using remote sensing and GIS data.
• Marketing Analytics and Customer Intelligence: Covers customer segmentation, behavioral analytics, churn prediction, A/B testing frameworks, and personalization algorithms used in e-commerce and digital marketing.

Project-Based Learning Philosophy

The department strongly advocates for project-based learning as a cornerstone of the educational experience. Projects are designed to mirror real-world challenges faced by industry professionals, allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge in practical settings.

The structure includes both mini-projects and a final-year capstone project:

• Mini-Projects (Semester-wise): Each semester introduces a mini-project that builds upon previous coursework. These projects are typically completed in teams of 3-5 students, with faculty mentors guiding the process from concept to implementation.
• Final-Year Thesis/Capstone Project: The capstone project is a significant research endeavor undertaken over two semesters. Students choose topics aligned with their specialization or industry interest, often collaborating with external partners. Faculty members serve as advisors throughout the project lifecycle, providing guidance on methodology, literature review, data collection, and presentation.

Evaluation criteria for projects include:

• Problem identification and scope definition
• Research methodology and technical feasibility
• Data analysis and model validation
• Documentation quality and clarity of results
• Presentation skills and team collaboration
• Innovation and originality of approach

Students are encouraged to select projects that align with their career aspirations, ensuring relevance and personal engagement. The department facilitates connections with industry partners, alumni networks, and research labs to support meaningful project selection.