By Dr Andrei Petrovski, SGA Director
11 April 2023
The SICSA Data Engineering Bootcamp was held on 20 January 2023 in the beautiful ARC Building, University of Glasgow
The main intent of the event was to raise awareness amongst members of the SICSA Graduate Academy of the goals, challenges, and tools used by the industry in designing, building and maintaining data products.
During the bootcamp three practical workshops were run by representatives from various sectors of industry – Engineering, FinTech and Public. Experts from the industry explained and demonstrated how the modern data stack, data pipelining tools and different parts of the data engineering lifecycle work together. The bootcamp programme started with the topics of data acquisition, collection and pre-processing presented by Steve Aitken from Intelligent Plant. Then, the attendees were exposed to the process of creating value from data using real-life examples by colleagues from Corporate Data Services in Barclays Bank. The final workshop on the day was presented by National Services Scotland, NHS focused on maintaining and enhancing the quality of data products.
During the bootcamp the SICSA PhD students who participated in the event had plenty of opportunities to speak to managers, engineers and researchers working in the Data Engineering field, who gave their advice on handling typical challenges, using specific tools and even provided interviewing tips for potential candidates interested in working for their companies and organisations. The event received very positive feedback, including “Real-life examples, honest answers and openness’, “Loved the views of industrial experts”, “Very engaging!!” the overall theme of the feedback was a desire to have more events like this and include additional practical and interactive challenges and activities for the students. SICSA, in collaboration with DataLab, are now considering what other events could be organised in the near future. We will keep you posted!!
