University News Last updated 29 May 2020
The School of Computing and Digital Technology is inviting staff across the University to nominate graduates to co-design a new postgraduate conversion course in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The MSc Artificial Intelligence course is due to start in September 2020, with Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Clare Mackie leading the response to a call from the Government to upskill graduates from various backgrounds in the highly employable areas of Data Science and AI.
As such, the course is being designed in close collaboration with potential students as well as industrial partners such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Cisco.
Based on their suitability for AI and Data Science, 10 nominees will be shortlisted and invited by the school to participate in a workshop in May, where they will review and redesign the curriculum for the MSc course. The details of the assessment of suitability, workshop and any reimbursements will be communicated to these nominees at a later date. In return, the participants will be eligible to apply for a 50 per cent bursary each should they enrol into the first offering of this programme in September 2020.
The School of Computing and Digital Technology has won a grant from the Office for Students (OfS) for the project RAISE (Raising Artificial Intelligence Skills and Employability). Together with industrial contributions, the project will leverage £1.7 million of funding.
The programme will recruit graduates from a mixture of STEM, STEM-related and non-STEM programmes. Also, the project aims to improve the diversity in the AI and Data Science workforce in the UK and will actively incentivise recruiting female, disabled and BAME students.
The need for up-skilling the workforce in the UK was summarised in the OfS call for proposals for developing the MSc programme.
Staff should send their nominations, along with the contact details, to atif.azad@bcu.ac.uk (cc: iain.rice@bcu.ac.uk; mariam.adedoyin-olowe@bcu.ac.uk; mak.sharma@bcu.ac.uk)