Cohort 10 Student Spotlight: Meet Sunil Kumar J S
A conversation where Sunil discusses his inspiration and approach towards data science, applications of data science in games, and experiences in the MSDS program at USF.
Sunil is a current student of Cohort 10 at the Master of Science in Data Science program at the University of San Francisco. He joined the program after working as an analyst and completing a bachelor’s in Oceanic Engineering from IIT Madras.
Background
Ronica: Can you start by telling me like you know a little bit about your background.
Sunil: Sure. I did my undergrad in Oceanic Engineering at IIT Madras. I became very much interested in it after studying waves in class 12 Physics. But as college progressed, I drifted away, and I started enjoying probability and math much more. While at college, I was exploring the many clubs the IIT campus has to offer. It was around that time, I came across the analytics club there, and that’s where my analytics journey began. Post that, I worked at EXL and PwC before coming into the program.
Ronica: That’s wonderful! Can you tell me a bit more about the ‘analytics club’ at IIT?
Sunil: Sure! They were doing some really interesting stuff that amazed me at that point. Unlike now, when we were studying, there wasn’t a lot of awareness around data. At that point, our main aim was to create awareness, so we organized some lectures. And on top of it, we were involved in many projects, like I built a Python library while I was in the club.
Why Data Science?
Ronica: Wonderful! As you said, it was the analytics club and your love for math that directed you towards data science. Is there anything else you feel that kind of led you in this direction?
Sunil: Definitely, apart from my college experience and my fondness for math, I feel my job motivated me a lot to pursue data science. While working, I saw how data drove decisions that affected the business and how it added value to the process. I enjoy math and strategy and analytics is the space, where I can apply both. Personally, I enjoy the impact that the data has created and that is what led me to pursue data science.
Why the USF MSDS Program?
Ronica: Thanks for sharing that! Just following forward on that question, why the MSDS program at USF?
Sunil: Sure. I was very certain to be here at USF. I had applied the previous year too but COVID made it impossible to travel, so I was looking forward to starting the program this year! The reason why I took up a data science course is that I wanted a new perspective. I do not have a formal education in the field and wish to complete a full-fledged academic program to cover all my gaps. The MSDS program gives me all that and much more. Plus, if you want to be the change and disrupt the technology business, San Francisco is the place to be. Secondly, the practicum with an in-depth accelerated 1-year program was something no other program could match.
Favourite class and project?
Ronica: So, we are about three months into the program now, what has been your favourite class, or a favourite project that you’ve done here at USF?
Sunil: This has been a really great and intense program. I am really enjoying the intensity of the course right now. Coming to the course, my favourite class so far was linear algebra, just because of how it helps us visualize things geometrically and makes things intuitive. And apart from that, I enjoyed Exploratory Data Analysis, where we talked about making convincing and aesthetically beautiful plots. I never knew matplotlib could do so much!
Ronica: That is so true! We keep on looking around for other python libraries but the power of matplotlib amazed me. And any project in particular you liked?
Sunil: I would say, the sentiment analysis project was interesting. As an analyst, I was always working on pre-organized data. In sentiment analysis, I realized how to scrape the tweets data and create a server. The entire aspect was new for someone who was working from the front end perspective.
Areas you are most interested in?
Ronica: True! I think the data acquisition projects seem to be everyone’s favourite. Can you tell me what aspect of data science are you most interested in and look forward to?
Sunil: The reason I chose USF is that it allowed me to explore. I just want to be open to things and see how it goes on from here. I wanted to keep this one year purely for exploration and explore as much as possible in the data sense, and see if I had an interest in research, or health care or any other area.
Practicum
Ronica: True, I think exploration is a great way to understand your true strengths. So moving ahead, as you mentioned earlier, the one thing that brought you to USF was the practicum. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Sunil: Sure. I will be working with Stanford’s medicine team, helping them make the glaucoma patients’ lives better using analytics and data sets. It would allow us to get a flavour of various aspects of machine learning, be it computer vision or text analysis or structured data for prediction making. I would say, our foremost purpose is to build interpretable predictive models.
Program Experience in the Pandemic
Ronica: I am glad you got the chance to experiment through your practicum! It sounds really exciting. So let us shift gears a bit. Because we started in the pandemic and it was difficult to get everyone on campus. So, what was the experience like for the program during this situation? I am aware that you did the boot camp remotely and then joined in person in the fall. Could you share your experience with that?
Sunil: So, for me, it was a little bit crazy this year. I had to start the boot camp online because of all the visa issues concerning COVID. But, but things were really comfortable as the professors created a really great infrastructure. USF had smoothened out all the nuances of the online delivery of the program. So I didn’t face any difficulty in terms of course content.
Ronica: So coming to campus in person, how was that experience for you?
Sunil: It was great! This is my first time in the United States, so initially, it was a bit overwhelming, but the campus is so good that I have really enjoyed my time here so far. Plus everyone in the cohort is great, in terms of personality, so you feel that everyone has something meaningful to add to your life.
Personal Interests
Ronica: What are the kinds of things if you do to unwind?
Sunil: In the fall break I really enjoyed all the trips USF had planned for students. It was great to see things around SF with my friends. Apart from that, like, I enjoy playing chess a lot. Apart from that, it’s mostly just hanging out with friends and cooking. If I’m stressed I just go and cook, it is like my version of meditation.
Ronica: That’s great! You know, I am really intrigued by how machine learning is enabling robots that can actually beat humans in games like chess. I am just amazed by how people come up with such unique applications of AI.
Sunil: True. But you know AI in games, specifically in chess, is just not limited to that. If you look at apps like chess.com, after you play a game it analyzes your game, suggests alternate moves, highlights your best moves and shows where you went wrong.
Ronica: Wow! It’s so cool that people can learn to play better chess this way!
Sunil: Exactly! All these things are automated. It’s not like some person was actually sitting and guiding you. It’s automated. Right. It’s so interesting that people are using AI in such ways. Their models tell us how many good moves there were in a given situation and what would have been a better chess move, just small instances to improve your game. I’m interested in that part actually where we can make things better using AI.
