Dr John O’Brien, associate dean, CMU-Q and  Patrick Lucey, associate research scientist, Disney Research Pittsburgh

 

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar’s (CMU-Q) Q-SmartLab programme is enabling students to learn how researchers are creating visual dashboards that link raw data to the user who wishes to
leverage it.
The overall aim of the programme is to provide new and often real time intelligence for decision-makers. According to John O’Brien, associate dean at Carnegie Mellon Qatar and co-director of the Q-SmartLab, students are learning through active participation in this type of research. By having a real world focus, whether it be banking or sports, will help attract the next generation of data scientists in Qatar.
“Attracting young men and women into studying technical fields like computer science and information systems can be challenging, but by using sports for example, we can make it more relevant to students and their parents,” said O’Brien, whose current research focuses on using data analytics in both
banking and sports .
Patrick Lucey, associate research scientist at Disney Research Pittsburgh, located on Carnegie Mellon’s home campus in the United States, also emphasises the point. Lucey visited CMU-Q recently, where he presented results from powerful techniques he has developed and applied to extract new intelligence from large amounts of unstructured data from soccer and tennis.
“A lot of concepts in machine learning and data mining are very abstract, but relating them to sports gives them meaning, which makes it engaging for young people” he said.
O’Brien said students who begin careers in large-scale analytics will contribute to Qatar’s economy including the sports industry, because a growing number of fields are turning to ‘big data’ to answer important questions.
“Hosting international sporting events will certainly benefit Qatar’s economy. However the lasting impact of this event will be the resources and skills nurtured within the country through the development of sports analytics, since it will undoubtedly spin-off into other industries such as finance, and oil and gas,” he said.
A decade ago, many professional sports teams were assembled based on managers’ gut feelings, and officials presided over games by making split-second decisions during fast plays. However, with the recent emergence of tracking technologies that can record players’ performances and the game ball itself, the Middle East’s sports industry could be set for big changes, both on and off the playing field.