Big Data- Its Corporate Use and Research Efforts

The DS&DA batch had a guest lecture scheduled on 18th Dec. The guest was Prof. Dr. Gunther Piller who is from the University of Applied Sciences, Mainz, Germany. Dr. Gunther started off the guest lecture by showing the students where exactly Mainz is located and its surrounding landmarks. Dr. Gunther has been a professor at this university since 2008 and told us how this university is different from large universities like the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

The University of Applied Sciences has active research programs going on wherein the employees and students try to interact and solve problems with different companies. The fields where they are currently focusing on are Data Mining and Machine Learning. Dr. Gunther then covered the various Big Data exploration strategies and methods. Along with this, he also covered the strategies and influencing factors for big data exploration which are essential. He told the students how a research gap is first identified after which the research is initiated.

Dr. Gunther had also recently done a survey that included 10 companies that were located in Germany. The main question that Dr. Gunther asked the different companies was how Big Data is being utilized by those companies. Each company was from a different sector and hence, they all had their own different views when it came to Big Data. Towards the end of the session, Dr. Gunther took time to answer the various questions of the students.