Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT), the pioneer in British higher education in Sri Lanka and the country’s premier IT and Business campus, held its first-ever annual convocation of the Robert Gordon University, UK (RGU). During the event held at the BMICH, degrees were conferred to students who had successfully completed the Master of Science Big Data Analytics of RGU. Prof. Kay Cooper and Prof. Nirmalie Wiratunga of Robert Gordon University (RGU) graced the occasion together with IIT staff and graduate families. After the handing over of degrees, the “Dr. Gamini Wickramasinghe Gold Medal” award for his outstanding performance was presented to Mohomed Shafeek Muhammed Shariq. The convocation also included a unique forum titled “Big Data Forum for Data Enthusiasts” where students and other participants were presented with the opportunity to interact with leading experts in the field of Big Data Analytics. 

These experts included Prof. Nirmalie Wiratunga from the School of Computing Science & Digital Media at Robert Gordon University, Dr. Ruwan Weerasinghe from the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and Dr. Dilshan Silva - Head of Analytics of Nations Trust Bank. Delivering the Welcome Address, Prof. Jayantha Wijeyaratne - Director of the IIT stated, “Our collaboration with the Robert Gordon University commenced in 2016 with the offering of two MSc degree programmes namely the MSc in Big Data Analytics and MSc in Business Analytics. IIT thrives in producing graduates in trending technologies which are of high demand. Visionary thinking of the academics and administrators of IIT resulted in offering the first postgraduate programme in Big Data Analytics in Sri Lanka. Today, Big Data platform and processing has been identified as one of the top five trending technologies.

Hence, the graduates in this field will have a high demand and they would be able to play a leading role in the organizations involved in big data processing.” Prof. John Harper - Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Robert Gordon University (RGU) stated, “The convocation marks a very important stage in the ongoing partnership between RGU and IIT, which began back in 2016 with the validation of the MSc course. Both institutions share a strong industry focus and top rankings in employability and since the course began we have made further strides to strengthen our relationship in both an academic and research capacity.RGU is a progressive university and we take great pride in seeing our graduates move on to successful careers. We are committed to engaging with industry and professions to ensure that our programmes are up to date, relevant and tailored to the needs of the current and future employment markets.” Robert Gordon University is a dynamic, modern place to study with an international reputation for providing highquality education from undergraduate through to PhD level.

The university has been awarded a Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), placing it in the top 20% of the best universities in the UK for the quality of its undergraduate teaching and learning. The MSc Big Data Analytics is a specialist Master’s degree course designed for practicing industry professionals such as Software Engineers and Business Analysts who have an honours degree in Information Technology, Computing or related areas. The courses equip students with significant computing knowledge with focus on modern big data analysis and visualisation methods, text analytics and big data specific programming skills coupled with NoSQL data stores. It provides the technical skills and research training necessary to develop sophisticated data analysis and retrieval systems applied to Big Data Analytics.The modules of the two-year, part-time course include Advance Databases, Big Data Programming, Cloud Computing, Data Analysis, Data Mining, Data Warehousing, Research Methods, Text Analytics and the MSc Project.

Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) was established in 1990 as the first private higher education institute that awards reputed British degrees in the field of ICT and Business. IIT is an award-winning campus offering degree programmes from the Robert Gordon University, UK and the University of Westminster, UK. IIT has played a pivotal role in strengthening the IT and Business sectors in Sri Lanka over the years by producing world-class graduates. These graduates have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs and IT/Business professionals in both local and international corporate and government entities. Since its inception, IIT has produced thousands of graduates who have excelled in over 250 organizations around the globe.