This 5-week workshop should give Europe lots more data scientists

A five-week program for training people in data-science techniques kicks off in London on Monday, creating another source of people who can offer companies valuable suggestions on how to change products and strategy.

Big consulting firm KPMG is backing the program, which goes by the name Science to Data Science. Pivigo Academy is organizing it.

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It targets “analytical Ph.Ds and scientists,” according to its website, and it’s attracted 85 students with backgrounds in astronomy, neuroscience, and other areas of study from 24 countries, according to an article today in the Wall Street Journal.

Not that KPMG and Pivigo are first on the London data science training scene. The three-month Data Science Retreat began its classes in April, and that same month Persontyle launched its School of Data Science in the city.

All of these can together respond to the demand for data scientists.

Aside from KPMG, sponsors of Science to Data Science include managed cloud provider Rackspace, which offers a managed service for running the Hadoop open-source software for storing, processing, and analyzing lots of different kinds of data, based on Hortonworks’ Hadoop distribution. Well-funded Hortonworks itself, one of the leading Hadoop vendors, also is sponsoring the London workshop.

And sponsors could get a lot out of the program.

“The main coursework will be to complete a real life big data problem supplied by our sponsor companies,” the Science to Data Science website states. “The project, which will run in parallel throughout the five weeks, will be solved in teams of 3-4 and should take approximately 3.5 weeks of full-time work.”