Vaishnavi and Pavithra Sevakula were offered to participate in the prestigious ACM India Winter School 2023. Both are second-year School of Technology Management & Engineering (STEM) students at SVKM’s NMIMS Hyderabad campus. The two were chosen out of a pool of over 400 hundred female student participants selected for the internship under the “Data Science for Social Good” theme.

The Winter School, held at SRM Institute of Science & Technology, is specially meant for the female participants to inspire aspiring candidates to pursue Data Science helping them to explore future machine learning modules and use the same to solve different problems relevant to society.

Biasis in online systems, fairness in classification, fundamentals in machine learning, data science for society, clustering and recommendation, and data science in healthcare were the topics covered in this ten-day internship.

Renowned experts delivered their talks during the program. These experts include Ashish Tendulkar of Google, Animesh Mukherjee of IIT Kharagpur, Abhijnan Chakrabarty of IIT Delhi, Dweeptobotee Brahma of IIT Jodhpur, Saptarshi Ghosh of IIT Kharagpur, Mitesh Khapra of IIT Madras, Srujana Merugu of Amazon, and Tavpritesh Sethi of IIT Delhi. Because of this opportunity, M. Vaishnavi and Pavithra Sevakula were able to study and gain knowledge in the presence of these world-renowned professionals about applications of data science.

Apart from enhancing the academic background of the participants, the winter school offered mentorship opportunities and encouraged teamwork. Because of this opportunity, M. Vaishnavi and Pavithra Sevakula were able to develop a strong peer network. They also learned from other students and exchanged experiences. The whole experience of Winter School will be invaluable for their data science work in the future.

Both M. Vaishnavi and Pavithra Sevakula were wholeheartedly thankful to NMIMS Hyderabad for providing them with this precious opportunity. The participants appreciated the rich curriculum and supportive professors. They were also thankful to helpful professors of the NMIMS Hyderabad including Dr. Siddhartha Ghosh, the Campus Director, Prof. Chandrakant Wani (Programme Chair), and Prof. Wasiha Tasneem (Mentor).

Expressing her thoughts about the Winter School, Vaishnavi said, “Each day was a stepping stone in an enriching learning experience. The insights gained have broadened my perspective and opened new horizons in the realm of data science for social good”

Pavithra also shared her thoughts about the Winter School. She explained the role of the program in shaping her future goals and said, “This experience has not just been about lessons. It has provided me with blueprints for future endeavours to create positive change! I want to continue understanding the power of data science and these ten days have been transformative.”

NMIMS Hyderabad is offering platforms to students and encouraging them to participate in programs like ACM Winter School. Such an ecosystem is helpful for students to understand how to apply data science in meaningful ways, which might prove to be helpful for society and the world at large soon.

No doubt, the selection of two female candidates for this Winter School marks a big step forward for Indian females in the engineering field.