Department of Data Science and Engineering IISER Bhopal

B.Tech and B.Tech-MTech in Data Science and Engineering

The Department of Data Science and Engineering (DSE) aims to play a crucial role in advancing technological progress and developing the nation in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). The department seeks to emerge as one of the best in the domain by building a solid theoretical foundation, skills for advanced programming, and cutting-edge research and development. The 4 years B.Tech and 5 years B.Tech-M.Tech (dual degree) programs in DSE, started in 2025, will provide students with better opportunities for excelling in academia and industry. The first year of our B.Tech program follows a common curriculum with other undergraduate programs in the institute. Students from natural, economic, and engineering sciences can apply for the DSE program based on their academic record and interest at the end of first year. In the second year, students have to credit core DSE courses in both semesters. The students in the third and fourth years have to credit a few core courses and some advanced courses as department/open electives, related to data science to develop sufficient theoretical comprehension, practical implementation, and programming experience. The whole final semester of the B.Tech program is designed for industrial/academic projects to broaden the scopes of employability.

A student can opt for B.Tech-M.Tech degree at the end of eighth semester, if he/she achieved 7 CPI till seventh semester of and B.Tech program, or qualified through certain departmental selection process when CPI is less than 7. In the ninth semester of the B.Tech-M.Tech program, the students have to credit two elective courses. Rest of the credit of the ninth semester and the whole tenth semester will be allotted for thesis works. The student must take 1 course on Intellectual Property Rights (ECO 500) during the program.

The curriculum will cover fundamental concepts, programming skill development as core subjects and recent technologies as advanced subjects. The courses will encourage students to enhance their skills and abilities by indulging them in projects, internships, entrepreneurship, and research. Our highly qualified and resourceful faculty members motivate, empower, and upskill the students with utmost care and dedication towards research, entrepreneurship and academic excellence. The key features of DSE B. Tech and B. Tech-M.Tech programs are as follows.

  • Development of strong foundational knowledge
  • Training on the latest technologies and architectures
  • Curriculum to cover diverse aspects of data science, basic mathematics and statistics, advanced programming and relevant subjects of AI
  • Training in state-of-the-art computational and research facilities
  • Fostering strong programming skills
  • Development of skills for better employability in industry and academia
  • Empowering students to join state-of-the-art research laboratories and renowned industries globally

We invite curious, bright young talents to join us and embark on an exciting journey of knowledge.

B.Tech and B.Tech-MTech Curriculum Information on B.Tech Admission


BS and BS-MS in Data Science and Engineering

The four years BS program and five years BS-MS program in DSE, started in 2019, is an interdisciplinary curriculum that trains students to handle diverse data and understand and implement different tools, techniques, and models for data analysis. The program focuses on developing domain knowledge in natural, economic, and engineering sciences. The fusion of domain knowledge with the scientific rigor to provide solutions drives the DSE students to be highly attractive to industry and academia. However, admissions to BS and BS-MS programs in DSE are discontinued from 2025 onwards.

In order to obtain a Minor in DSE, a student must take 18 credits of DSE courses. The students interested in completing BS-MS need to opt for this before the end of the 7th-semester examinations. The student must take 1 course on Intellectual property (ECO500) during the program.

BS and BS-MS Curriculum  


PhD in Data Science and Engineering

The PhD program in Data Science and Engineering (DSE) started in 2022. We are one of the first IISERs to start such a program. This PhD program in DSE is interdisciplinary in nature, where students from various backgrounds (science, engineering, humanities, medicine, etc.) can enrol in and pursue their dream of being a data scientist. As part of this program, we nurture young minds to develop intuition through rigorous coursework and hands-on sessions, including heavy code-based projects. The coursework includes various topics, from fundamental subjects (mathematics, statistics, computer programming, etc.) to advanced topics (machine learning, graph machine learning, deep learning, biometrics, computer vision, geospatial AI, natural language processing etc.). The curriculum of this program is designed to achieve these objectives so that students will be exposed to a broader range of fields than in more standard PhD programs while working with our faculty members. In brief, this PhD program in DSE will prepare students to become leaders in data science research and help them build outstanding careers in academia or industry. The key features of this program are as follows.

  • Develop expertise to handle large-scale datasets and models of various domains
  • Skill development to solve complex real-world problems
  • Mastering in state of the art AI techniques
  • Disseminate the knowledge in the top-tier research venues
  • Entrepreneurial skill development for building novel research products
  • Improve teaching skills through training as teaching assistants

PhD Curriculum Information on PhD Admission


Research Areas

Candidates are encouraged to contact individual faculty members to better understand their research areas and objectives

Research Areas Faculty Members Research Webpage
Biometrics and Machine Learning Dr. Akshay Agarwal ResearchPage
Natural Language Processing Dr. Jasabanta Patro ResearchPage
Hyperspectral Image Processing Dr. Samiran Das ResearchPage
BioNLP and AI for Healthcare Dr. Tanmay Basu ResearchPage
Geospatial Artificial Intelligence Dr. Vaibhav Kumar ResearchPage
Computer Vision and Biomedical AI Dr. Vinod K Kurmi ResearchPage
LLMs, Knowledge Graph, and Graph ML Dr. Akash Anil ResearchPage