YEREVAN. - The American University of Armenia (AUA) is going to open a laboratory for preparing data science specialists, AUA guest lecturer Artur Khalatyan told Armenian News – NEWS.am.

The University has already got a small group of data scientists, but now there is a wish to provide the students a laboratory and opportunities for work practice in business.   

Among all the specialties in IT sphere, data science is one which requires maximal knowledge: It is necessary to know university-level math and physics.

“The western centers are anxious about finding such specialists, whereas we have no such problem fortunately; there are lots of literate young people. Of course, in the absence of a demand for their knowledge, many of them deal with something else, for instance, writing mobile applications, which doesn’t require knowledge of math of physics.  We want the entire talent of these people to be revealed,” Khalatyan said.

He also underscored the fact that on average the salaries of data scientists exceed those of programmers 3-4 times 

“Our Hackathon, which we organized a month ago, made us happy. Only some of its participants were data scientists. The rest were either programmers or statistics specialists, but despite this, they showed excellent results in 18 hours during only one day.

But we were most of all taken aback by an ordinary schoolboy from Armavir town, who came the third. And this in case when we made no age “discounts” for him. Through mobile data, he tried to understand the dynamics and directions of migration flows of Armenia according to regions,” Khalatyan noted.

Data Science distinguishes between two directions:  Predictive Analytics and Engineering. The University is going to prepare specialists in both directions, in the area of real business, first Armenian and then perhaps foreign one.

“When selecting students, we will pay attention not to their diplomas, but knowledge. It will be necessary to have an experience in programming or statistics,” Khalatyan added.