· 91 Students were conferred with Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) in Business Analytics degree
Mumbai, 25th September, 2021: SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies – Centre of Excellence in Analytics and Data Science (NMIMS COE-A&DS), one of India’s leading University with a long legacy of academic excellence, held its first annual convocation ceremony on 25th September 2021.
The convocation was presided by Chief Guest Mr. Omkar Phadnis Managing Director, Accenture Operations; Nominee of Honorable Chancellor, Dr. Ramesh Bhat (Honorable Vice Chancellor); Dr. Sharad Mhaiskar, Pro-Vice Chancellor; Dr. Meena Chintamaneni, Pro-Vice Chancellor; Dr. Anuja Agarwal, Associate Dean Technology Management & Digital Transformation, Dr. Sridhar Vaithianathan, Director of CoE-A&DS; and faculty members of CoE-A&DS.
During the welcome address, Dr. Ramesh Bhat, Vice Chancellor, congratulated the graduating students. He shared that Centre of excellence has enriched the students with analytical skills to tackle business challenges. He pointed out the collaborating learning environment offered at NMIMS that would make the students excel in whatever profession they choose and live with contentment. He reflected that challenges thrown out by the current pandemic made the students and authorities to look at the disruptive and unstructured nature of the business world and respond to the situation with resilience. He conveyed the importance of distributed leadership and volunteerism, and exhorted the students to do-good things and make the world a better place to live.
Dr. Sridhar Vaithianathan, Director, CoE-A&DS presented the report for the excellent work done by CoE in the last two years. He said that it was a matter of great pride that the CoE-A&DS has achieved so much in such a short time. He also highlighted the fact that the students had participated / won in around 90 national level analytics’ based competitions. He also mentioned that close collaboration with industry had resulted in summer/winter internship, co-teaching by industry experts and almost full placements of students by around 40 prominent companies including KPMG. He said that the CoE is always looking forward to the future by restructuring the program structure of MBA-Business Analytics and starting a new MBA program in Digital Transformation.
Delivering the convocation address, Chief Guest Mr. Omkar Phadnis Managing Director, Accenture Operations inspired the Graduating students with his words of wisdom. He shared his experience in the following seven areas and urged the graduating students to keep these lessons in mind.
- Be a Cross-section Leader focusing on four key areas: business, leadership skills, technology skills quotient, ability to handle data and create value out of it.
- Follow T model of the carrier: Horizontal bar indicates the breadth of knowledge, vertical reflects core domain specialisation. The first few years focus on the vertical bar, and later years of life create horizontal bar confidence.
- Understand the importance of conceptual clarity: what the concept means
- Innovation does not happen just sitting in labs. Use ideas for doing something which has business value, scalability, matter to the community at large, some of which are going to do better
- Do not search for nails if you have a hammer: Look at processes in a holistic manner and always focus on the big picture approach, problem and then find options to solve it.
- How do you conduct yourself: Understand the importance of keeping yourself relevant, what does being relevant means, what you have done is just a start, the pursuit of relevance should not end, take initiatives and efforts to be always relevant
- What comes back to you: Your authentic view, be authentic, present authentic view, remember the people who have been responsible for bringing you to this stage. Give back to your community. Ensure you imbibe the core value of stewardship – caring for others and the community.
He ended his address by quoting Heraclitus “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.” He related the quote and explained that one’s life and career are like a flowing river, one cannot be static, and as a person, each of us will be changing with every experience, but one should ensure that the change is for the better. Use your experience for better and change for better.
The ceremony concluded with vote of thanks by Dr. Sharad Mhaiskar, Pro Vice Chancellor NMIMS University.
About Centre of Excellence Analytics & Data Science:
The Centre of Excellence in Analytics and Data Science (COE-A&DS) of SVKM’s NMIMS formally started its pursuit of excellence in the area of data driven analytics in the year 2018.
The centre aims to become the beacon in the field of Analytics & Data Science and functions to achieve the following objectives,
- To foster growth in ability to read, analyze and argue with data for building a culture of analytics within the institution and across the country.
- To become a leading expert research centre in data science and analytics through,
- Focused multidisciplinary research,
- Knowledge dissemination and knowhow to the stakeholders, and
- Collaboration with the industry and public institutions to generate business value from the data.
The centre vouches to develop analytics and data science talent through its contemporary industry driven curriculum, research, training, and by imparting value based education. The centre offers 2 year MBA program in Business Analytics since 2019. To add one more feather to its hat, from the year 2021, the centre also offers 2 year MBA program in Digital Transformation. The NMIMS, Centre of Excellence, consists of technologies & tool-kits, data scientists, educationist, techno-functional consultants which enables to cater to the needs of data science arena and digital transformation field.
The centre has mix of full time faculty and guest faculty coming from diverse backgrounds and varying industry experience. The emphasis is on practical knowledge and inculcating life-long learning skills.
The state of art infrastructure, case study pedagogy, hands on approach using real world datasets, modern computing facilities provides experiential learning experience to the students of COE-A&DS
Website: http://coe.nmims.edu/
WATCH THE CONVOCATION VIDEO
