Friday, 4 February 2022 University of Primorska is co-creating opportunities for staff development in Central Asia

A 10-day international teacher-training in the field of Intelligent Big Data Analysis is concluding at the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies, University of Primorska (UP FAMNIT). The training is a part of the ERASMUS + project ELBA, where highly profiled specialists from universities in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are participating. The purpose of this training is to implement a multidisciplinary package of module-based courses for bachelor and master students at the 10 partnering universities in Central Asia.

According to participants, the seminars are very informative and the project itself is very engaging. “We are learning about the importance of the Intelligent Big Data Analysis (IBDA) models and extracting the information,” adds Shokhjakhon Abdufattokhov from the Department of Control and Computer Engineering at the Turin Polytechnic University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

“The lectures are general in content and not limited to certain areas, so we can all apply the knowledge to our specific research areas and university study programmes. The plan is that once we finish this training we will be able to implement the knowledge in developing new courses on IBDA for our students in undergraduate and master’s study programmes, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The primary reason for our visit is to take the theory and knowledge that will help us build a curriculum on IBDA”, says Abdufattokhov.

His research field is artificial intelligence, a technology that enables a machine to simulate human behaviour. Machine learning is a subset of AI which allows a machine to automatically learn from past data without programming explicitly. The goal of AI is to make a smart computer system that solves complex problems.

But how does the IBDA fit in all of this?

Intelligent data analysis reveals implicit, previously unknown, and potentially valuable information or knowledge from large amounts of data. Intelligent data analysis is also a kind of decision support process. Rule finding is working out rules contained in the data set by means of certain methods or algorithms.

“I am applying machine learning to control theory. To put it simply – I am now working on projects of smart buildings where we have sets of big data available to us. To process this data, we have to choose the right algorithm and features, this is IBDA. We can also use it to analyse business intelligence or do market analytics to find out about consumer shopping habits. Some of the colleagues here are interested in building models for the coal mining industry or for predictions in civil engineering. You can extract some really useful features that can give you very exact predictions”, explains Abdufattokhov.

International guests had the opportunity to meet with the Dean of UP FAMNIT, Assoc. Prof. Ademir Hujdurović, and the Rector of the University of Primorska, Prof. Klavdija Kutnar. During their free time they also had a chance to visit Koper: “To tell you the truth, we really like Koper”, they add. “We’ve had a historic tour of the city centre and it was very interesting. The town prompts you to visit Koper, not just once in your life, but again and again.”

The training that was coordinated by Assist. Prof. Branko Kavšek from the University of Primorska is ending on 4 February 2022, however, the project is far from being concluded. Another training will follow at the one of the other partner institutions in Europe, after that IBDA centres will be established in universities across Central Asia and multidisciplinary packages of module-based courses will be implemented in universities’ curriculum.

In the meantime, UP FAMNIT continues providing great research and establishing international cooperation, as well as offering excellent study programmes in the field of Information technologies. To find out more about studying Computer Science (at undergraduate, master’s and doctoral level) and Data Science (at master’s level) at Famnit, we invite you to visit the upcoming Information Days on 11 and 12 February. More information available at www.famnit.upr.si.