BS (Data Science)
Recently, Dr. Shrey Gupta sat down with his brother-in-law – an engineer preparing for an artificial intelligence job interview – and offered to help him revise. Five minutes in, the engineer stopped him. “I feel like I’m the doctor,” he laughed. “I don’t understand what you’re saying at all.” For Dr. Gupta, a pediatrician and neonatologist from Delhi, Mathematics wasn’t part of his daily medical practice. Yet, as a former Mathematics position holder during his school days, he missed the rigour of Math and Physics.. When IIT Madras launched its BS Degree in Data Science and Applications, he saw an opportunity to reconnect with his analytical roots and joined the very first batch.
Long before joining the degree, Dr. Shrey was no stranger to code. As a hobbyist, he had written scripts to interface hospital machines, setting up systems that sent X-ray and blood gas reports directly to doctors’ mobile phones. But he always wondered how things were built professionally.
His innovations extend beyond medicine, too. An avid 3D printing enthusiast, Dr. Shrey built a web tool that converts 2D vector art into 3D printable wall grids. To make the tool work, he needed to reduce high-color images down to just four printable filament colors. He solved this using the K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm – a concept he learned in his Machine Learning Foundations course. “If I was doing it randomly as a hobby, I would have no idea such an algorithm exists,” he notes. “This course gives you a thought process to solve problems.”
Balancing a demanding medical career with a rigorous degree for four years meant that progress was slow and, at times, incredibly difficult. The real test arrived with Maths-2 and Stats-2. He managed to pass both courses, but Dr. Shrey couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t truly grasped the concepts. “All those linear transformations were going above my head. I passed them, but at the end of it, I felt like I hadn’t got anything out of it.”
So, he did something highly unusual: he voluntarily went back and retook the courses. This time, he studied them from the ground up, truly mastering the math and ultimately earning ‘S’ and ‘A’ grades.
“If you go to YouTube, the only negative thing people say is that there is too much theory,” he says.
“But I feel the theoretical background is the most important thing. Today, when we talk about any AI algorithm, we know it has been built from scratch, brick by brick. People feel we are going through two years of theory, but it’s the most essential groundwork.”
He points out that while the internet is full of “crash courses” that jump straight into Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Reinforcement Learning, they often leave learners confused. “IIT Madras doesn’t want to spoon-feed you. If you want a quick crash course, you should go somewhere else. But if you want a solid foundation, and you are ready to give the time, then the BS Degree is the best.”
Today, as he moves into the BSc level and prepares to take courses in Computer Vision and sound processing, Dr. Shrey plans to merge his medical expertise, AI knowledge, and startup ambitions to create gamified learning tools. “Before this, there was always a big question mark in your head, wondering if the other guy is smarter than you. For someone in the medical field, this is a different universe,” he reflects.
“But after going through this course, I know at least what I know. I know where the sky is, and I know where the ground is.”
~written by Nikita Nanduri
