The faster technological development goes, the more important lifelong learning becomes. Örebro University is now releasing five AI courses that are aimed directly at professionals in the business world. During the autumn, employees can learn more about machine learning, reinforcement learning, virtual reality in industrial applications, explainable AI as well as distributed AI and multi-agent systems.
Debbie Lau works as a data scientist at Volvo Cars, with a focus on battery technology. “We use many applications of machine learning,” she says.
Örebro University launched its investment in advanced-level AI courses for professionals – the so-called Smarter program – in 2017 and has since built up an extensive course program together with industry partners, Jönköping University, the University of Skövde and with funding from the KK foundation .
The goal is to contribute to lifelong learning and strengthen Sweden’s competitiveness.
One of this spring’s participants, Debbie Lau, was working with inventory planning and supply chain automation at Volvo Group when she and her colleagues realized that the AI reinforcement learning method will become an important tool for warehouse automation in the future. That’s why she decided to study the course Reinforcement learning part 1 at Örebro University.
– It was a good course, I could definitely imagine taking it again. It gave me a greater knowledge base. I got to learn the theory behind the method, which means I have a good understanding of how the algorithms work and are structured, says Debbie Lau.
“AI is as important at Volvo Cars as it is at the Volvo Group”
Now she has just changed jobs and works as a data scientist at Volvo Cars, with a focus on battery technology.
– We use many applications of machine learning, so AI is as important at Volvo Cars as it is at the Volvo Group. I will continue to study and Smarter is definitely one of my choices, says Debbie Lau.
Julia Lindohf, who is studying a master’s in statistics, was told about the Smarter courses by a student friend. She became curious and in the spring took the courses Natural language processing and AI ethics for engineers. And she was pleasantly surprised.
– They are so different compared to all the academic courses I studied before. Instead of starting by talking a lot of math, as is usually the case, the teachers start talking about applications and then connect them to the technology. It makes you very curious and I just sat and waited: “When will they release the next lecture?”.
“Really learned things on a deeper level”
Julia Lindhof also highlights Mohamadreza Faridghasemnia, who is a lecturer in the Natural Language Processing course.
– He is terribly talented. He has a huge range of knowledge, which means that the answers you get are not limited to Natural Language Processing but are comprehensive. It makes everything so much fun. He has really taught me things on a deeper level, says Julia Lindhof.
Julia Lindhof was so satisfied with the spring courses that she has now signed up for two more courses in the autumn, Reinforcement learning part 1 and Virtual reality in industrial applications.
Mohamadreza Faridghasemnia is happy that the course was well received.
– Our goal was to design this course for working people. We collected methods from several sourcebooks to provide multiple viewpoints on the field. We also added our experience and showed pros and cons of methods, and also discussed the problems we experienced as someone who tried these methods.
In addition, Mohamadreza Faridghasemnia was able to use his experiences working with the course in the scientific report Pedagogical Principles in the Online Teaching of NLP: A Retrospection .
See the entire autumn course offer here .
