Class Description

Today, the world is literally reinventing itself with Data and AI. However, learning a set of ‘related theories’ vs. ‘making it work’ is not the same, especially for innovating competitive advantage, economic strength or social good, and even national/global security.

Thus, Data-X is a mixture of half Data Science and Data Systems and the other half on Innovation, which includes behaviors and processes required to create new data-related applications.  At its core, Data-X is an advanced project course which is highly applied.  The course surveys a variety of key theoretical concepts and software tools. Data-X has a focus on helping students validate, design, and build data science, AI, and Machine Learning applications and systems (not only algorithms) for real-world user impact.

The course covers 3 tracks aimed to guide students’ project work and future industry work: 

  • code and theory (e.g., high- and low-code tools),
  • broader insight from instructors, industry guests, and inductive learning games, and
  • teams and projects (e.g., live team demos and feedback).

To further enrich student learning experience, project teams will be assigned an external industry mentor for a few hours per month.

While the syllabus for next semester is subject to refinement, the Fall 2021 syllabus is public at https://datax.berkeley.edu/berkeley-course/.

Prerequisites

Students from all majors and countries are welcome since diversity adds value in co-building applications and systems to help society. However, the course has technical application, so students should have completed a probability or statistics course, and have the ability to write Python code (or be committed to complete foundational Python material by week 2 end):

More Information

View the Data-X website for more information including a syllabus, class material and previous projects.

Instructor

Derek S. Chan enjoys learning from and empowering people through education, technology innovation, and theater arts. His Artificial Intelligence (AI) teams and products have helped companies reach their highest-ever customer satisfaction and/or revenue growth, plus #1 AP Automation 2020-21 and the IT World Award 2018. He was AI Product Director at Bill.com and now explores greater personal challenge and meaning through his own startup. He is an invited speaker at AI conferences, and an alum of UC Berkeley’s Master of Information and Data Science program, co-receiving the Hal R. Varian Award followed by an informal Google partnership.

 

Ikhlaq Sidhu, Chief Scientist, and Faculty Director of UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. He is the author of the book "Innovation Engineering" and he holds 75 patents in internet communication technologies. Dr. Sidhu developed the Entrepreneurship & Technology area at the #1 public university in the world, the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (for new ventures), and the Berkeley Method of Innovation Leadership (for technical leaders). In 2018, Sidhu received the IEEE Major Education Innovation Award. He received Berkeley IEOR Emerging Area Professor Award in 2009 at UC Berkeley. In 1999, he received 3Com Corporation’s Inventor of the Year Award. He serves on many advisory boards. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his masters’ degree and doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University.

 

Recent News

SCET Partners with University of Economics, Prague (VŠE) to Enhance its Innovation Pedagogy

By Ella Jensen | September 12, 2019

The Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) at the University of California, Berkeley and the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics at the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic recently formed a new partnership to help facilitate the exchange of pedagogy, faculty, and students between the two universities. Additionally, mentors from UC Berkeley will…

Now Hiring for Data-X Spring Course

By Ella Jensen | August 20, 2019

The Industrial Engineering and Operations department at UC Berkeley is now hiring one co-instructor for the Data-X spring semester course, as well as multiple graduate student instructors.  The course is listed as INDENG 135/290 Applied Data Science with Venture Applications (Data-X) and will be offered through the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.  This highly-applied…

AI and Tax Season – Why AI and Data Does Not Solve Every Problem & Why Systems and Good Architecture Matter More

By Ikhlaq Sidhu | April 22, 2019

By Ikhlaq Sidhu | April 22, 2019 A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to visit a tax department for one of the world’s leading global economies. My colleague Alexander Fred-Ojala and I were there to discuss how artificial intelligence and data technologies might fit into their strategic plans. It was a great discussion, and a…

Data-X Poster Session shows breadth of AI projects

By Keith McAleer | December 11, 2018

This semester students had an opportunity to apply the latest data science tools and algorithms to real-life industry problems in our course Applied Data Science with Venture Applications, also known as Data-X (INDENG 135 / 290).  For the first time, students were able to showcase their projects in a poster session event on December 4th at…

Refer to our Courses page for a full list of SCET courses and current class offerings

and our Certificate page for more information on our Certificate in Entrepreneurship & Technology.

Contact

See the Enrollment FAQs on our courses page and certificate page and contact
scet-academics@berkeley.edu
 for additional questions.