Dr. René Brunner is a Big Data Engineer / Scientist and the Director of Datamics, a Data Science consultancy that offers online training, development, and implementation of Data Science solutions.
His online courses on Python, R, Machine Learning and Co. are now bestsellers on Udemy with more than 30.000 participants.
1. Please introduce yourself.
My name is René Brunner and I help people become Data Scientists and solve Data Science problems for companies or individuals.
I studied Business Informatics at the University of Mannheim and did my Ph.D. in the area of grid systems (nowadays we call them cloud systems).
I specialized early on in the areas of scaling databases, peer-peer systems, and Big Data analysis and I worked at IBM and SAP during my studies.
2. What is Datamics?
Datamics helps companies and individuals solve Data Science problems. Specifically, this means that we train people to become Data Scientists and guide them in their Data careers. We train them in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and DevOps. This is done through online courses on Udemy as well as face-to-face training for students and employees.
We also advise companies on the technical development and roll-out of Data Science and Machine Learning solutions. In doing so, we always try to involve employees through customized training during development, as most companies want to have the Data Science implementation in-house. Our clients come from various industries ranging from automotive to retail.
3. Who are your courses for?
Our courses are mostly in German and are aimed at people who want to take the first step in Data Science. Content includes programming in Python/R, Machine Learning, AI with Keras and Tensorflow, and DevOps with Docker and Git.
The most popular are the AI courses on Keras and TensorFlow because these topics are fairly new and not yet covered by universities and other training institutions.
Many students and young professionals take our courses. There are also many employees among the course participants who come from a different field such as biology or accounting and want to retrain.
In addition to the online videos, our training consists of projects that the participants have to work on. If the participants have any questions, there is an online forum that they can contact. We also host online hackathons where the participants are divided into groups and work on data science cases together.
4. How did you find your passion for data?
I’ve been fascinated by mathematics and computer science since I was in high school. The first time I came into contact with Data Science was in 2006 during my master’s thesis. At that time, I analyzed the world’s largest peer-to-peer network with over 200 real participants. Since then I’ve continued to focus on this area.
I’m particularly fascinated by real-world Data Science use cases. Unlike most Kaggle competitions, where it’s often about single-digit percentage optimizations, I always find it great when you can gain new insights and use cases from data.
5. Why do you want to teach Data Science?
I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurship because I like to build things on my own. I was already doing training at university back then. Even now, I regularly give training sessions for students at the Macromedia Executive School in Munich. I simply enjoy working with people and helping them.
When online courses became more and more popular, it was the logical next step to offer my training courses online as well. Online courses have a great advantage in that you can reach many more people. Not everyone wants to enroll in a university to learn Data Science. Through Udemy, I’m able to help even more people on their way to becoming Data Scientists.
6. What invention do you hope to see in your lifetime?
In the last century, there were many groundbreaking inventions and achievements like the car, the internet, or the moon landing. Therefore, I would be happy if I can still experience a rather “simple” invention like the self-driving car. This would not only make my everyday life easier but also increase road safety and protect the environment with shared mobility.
7. If you could switch places with the CEO of a company for one day, which one would it be?
Jeff Bezos. He built a leading company in the field of e-commerce and cloud technology. Amazon is at the forefront of technology and offers super interesting products in the cloud and Data Science area with AWS.
