Tecnun has launched this summer the specialist program 'Data Analytics in Engineering', which has been taught for six weeks between June and July. With this course, the School seeks to respond to an industrial environment that increasingly demands more professionals with the ability to manage, exploit and capitalize on data from their own processes, machines, customers, etc. 

Students have received essential and practical training in Big Data and Data Analytics, deepening in programming languages core topic, particularly Python and R, machine learning (Machine Learning and Deep learning), parallelization and cloud computing, with the goal that students know how to transform data into value and useful information.

The course was led by Deputy Director Research Tecnun, Francis Planes, and has had the collaboration of several companies from various industrial sectors, where Data Analytics and Big Data is already an element core topic of its strategy for innovation and continuous improvement. Among the companies that have shared their experience with the students of Tecnun are Gestamp, CAF and IBM.

On the part of Gestampvisited Tecnun Laura ViñolasIndustrial Engineering '14), and current technical director of department Industry 4.0 at Gestamp. Viñolas shared with the course students how his company applies data analysis in its day-to-day processes. "I wanted to show them a practical image of Big Data, so that they can see that there is not only the theoretical part that they learn at class". Viñolas highlighted the growing importance that Big Data is acquiring. "At Gestamp, my department was created 3 years ago and there were only two of us. Today there are more than 30 of us, so this allows us to appreciate that analytics is becoming more and more important." Finally, Viñolas highlighted "the importance of having mixed profiles when it comes to connecting the industrial world and the digital world." 

From CAF, visited Tecnun Ander Aramburu, also a former student of the School (Industrial Eng. '10), and currently responsible for data analytics at CAF. Ander highlighted that"in recent years, component condition based maintenance (CBM) techniques have gained increasing interest in the railway field". Aramburu also pointed out that "CBM is based on continuously monitoring the state of a subsystem and, by means of predictive algorithms, estimating what its real maintenance requirements will bein the future.For this, the data analyst's profile plays an essential role". Finally, Aramburu presented specific cases of analytics used in the company CAF.

On behalf of IBM-Spain, Héctor Alcaide, head of IBM's Analytcis area , and his colleagues Javier Aroztegui and David Kremer visited the School. They spoke to the students about the reality of artificial intelligence in Spain. "They also talked about what is to come in the near future. Finally, we concluded with a more technical section in which we explained to the students at Tecnun how our projects are developed." 

Among the students who attended the course was Juan Trullos, who despite currently working at DLR in Germany, did not want to miss this opportunity to continue learning. "As soon as I heard that Tecnun was going to start this course I signed up," he confessed during one of the breaks, between class and class, while answering work emails on his laptop. "I take advantage of the breaks to work a bit, and also the afternoons, but I didn't want to miss this opportunity to learn more about Big Data and Data Analytics," concluded Trullos.