New competencies risen

In alignment with UAE vision 2021 and Abu Dhabi vision 2030, College of Engineering (CoE) at Al Ain University of Science and Technology (AAU) –Abu Dhabi Campus- organized and conducted a workshop entitled “Data Science and Blockchain” for students and faculty on 31/1/2019 in collaboration with IBM-Dubai and technically sponsored from IEEE UAE section.

But, what is Data Science?

According to WikiPedia, Data science is a multi-disciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from data in various forms, both structured and unstructured, similar to data mining. It is a “concept to unify statistics, data analysis, machine learning and their related methods” in order to “understand and analyze actual phenomena” with data. It employs techniques and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, information science, and computer science.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain, originally block chain,is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a merkle tree root hash). By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way”. For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for inter-node communication and validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires consensus of the network majority. Although blockchain records are not unalterable, blockchains may be considered secure by design and exemplify a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus has therefore been claimed with a blockchain. – WikiPedia

The aim of this workshop was to highlight the competitive knowledge economy in the world and to address the need of the new competencies risen in the new era. The workshop provided successful training on Blockchain principles and a full introductory on Data Science.

Organizing this workshop, aimed to enhance the knowledge and skills of the academics and students, in addition to keeping them updated with new information and technologies in the engineering field.

The workshop was very useful and opened different insights for students and faculty on how Blockchain can be used to perform high level tasks.

The participants were involved in practical session working on IBM Blockchain environment and IBM Watson intelligent workstation (Watson). They actively took part in the workshop by answering quick questions, building codes, as well as sharing their training notions and experiences.