LAHORE: A five-day international workshop on ‘Data Science in Practice’ concluded at PUCIT on Sunday. Six eminent data science practitioners from Germany, the Netherlands, and Pakistan representing IBM, KPMG, Teradata, PUCIT, and ITU conducted the various sessions to train 50 professionals from industry and academia by using real world data from the telecom, healthcare, and logistic services. They covered state-of-the-art technical subjects and tools including machine learning, deep learning, dimensionality reduction, feature selection, Python, Pandas, Hadoop, Spark, and Blockchain. A Churchill Medal holder from Aitchison College and an eminent scholar of machine learning, Prof Dr Haroon Babri, with 40-year professional career spanning University of Pennsylvania, Nanyang University Singapore, Kuwait University, LUMS, and UET Lahore, was the chief guest. Dr Babri lauded PUCIT’s efforts to organise a practice oriented workshop in one of the most vital scientific areas of present and future. He said that importance of data science could not be over emphasised, and that it is being used by technology giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon to not only enhance their revenues but also to change the way we live and move forward. He further said that in Forbes latest list of professionals, data scientists are in highest demand with average annual salary of $120,000 in the USA. Published in Daily Times,September 25th 2017.