February 15, 2022. The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia (FMIPA UI), through the Indonesian Artificial Intelligence Center (AiCI), officially implemented the second batch of the Independent Campus Certified Independent Study program for 123 students throughout Indonesia with various study program backgrounds.
In this case, AiCI takes part in the onboarding field of the Internship Program for Indonesian Artificial Intelligence (AI) Talents.
All students will study AI technology online for five months under the guidance of a team of AiCI tutors, alumni of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) at the University of Indonesia. They will also receive in-depth material from experts from the Faculty and professionals.
Certified Independent Study is part of the flagship Independent Campus program of the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology in collaboration with professional partners to provide opportunities for students to learn and develop themselves through activities outside of lectures, but are still recognized as part of the lecture.
In his remarks, the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia (UI), Dede Djuhana, Ph.D., stated that in this era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, it's not just industry that needs superior human resources in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, but also research institutions and government agencies. Several countries have even developed various strategies to prepare competitive digital talent.
"The development of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 is currently massive. Various activities, both research and industry, are in dire need of data science and AI. Therefore, considering this, Indonesia certainly needs several strategies to develop qualified human resources in these fields," said Dede.
In line with this, Dede continued, FMIPA UI also plays an important role in encouraging the development of Data Science and AI, by establishing collaborations with related institutions, and making these two increasingly popular fields the main focus of discussion in research groups within the FMIPA UI environment.
"Therefore, FMIPA UI is collaborating with PT Artificial Intelligence Indonesia (AII) to prepare AI talents from elementary school to university level so they have the basic provisions and competencies to study various AI applications in the future," he continued.
"On the other hand, FMIPA UI also provides space for the development of Data Science and AI. At UI, one of our research groups focuses on Big Data, Data Science, and AI, from the AiCi team and the Mathematics Department," Dede added.
On the same occasion, Tutus Kusuma, Head of the Certified Internship and Independent Study Program at the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, stated that, in accordance with the government's mandate for digital transformation, Indonesia needs 9 million digital talents over the next 15 years. Therefore, to achieve this target, the government requires all parties to work together to prepare effectively.
"In line with the government's mandate that we need 9 million digital talents in the next few years, this activity is a prototype of what we hope will happen in the future. This means that going forward, this program will no longer be implemented centrally by the ministry, but will instead be implemented synergistically between collaborative partners and universities independently," said Tutus.
Meanwhile, AiCI Director Dr. Djati Handoko explained the series of activities that participants must go through to obtain an independent campus certificate in this internship program.
These activities include Live Sessions, Workshops, Interest Presentations, Expert Learning, Mentoring, and Showcases.
As part of the learning process, the team also facilitated participants to work on final projects with collaborators, receiving direct guidance from them. This activity is scheduled to take place over the final two months.
"For the final two months, participants will engage in activities with our startup collaborators. Together with them, we will continue our learning by working on projects," said Dr. Djati.
The collaborators are start-up companies engaged in the fields of Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Recommendation Systems, Application Development, Natural Language Processing, Microcontrollers, and AI Learning Development.
"Participants are free to choose one of these fields according to their interests to be used as their final project," Dr. Djati added.
"Hopefully, this diversity will provide us with many ideas and discussions, with input from participants from different study programs," he added.
