Aegon started building its data analytics capabilities back in 2013, when they set up the Aegon Analytical Academy together with the training school of MIcompany, now called GAIn. Today, 8 years after its launch, the academy is still running and has upskilled more than 80 employees in AI & data across the company in 11 countries. Have a look back on how and why Aegon started this important initiative to educate its people. This case study is from 2015 and was first published on MIcompany.nl.

As part of the 3-year program of the Aegon Analytical Academy, participants complete two exchange projects of 3 months at another Aegon Unit, in many cases abroad. In Paula Genovés’ case, she went to Budapest to work on a churn prediction project, putting all her new skills and learnings into practice. Read on to learn about her experience building a model that could save the company more than €1,000,000.00 a year!

Berkeley, a small town twenty minutes east of San Francisco, is home to UC Berkeley, the oldest campus of the University of California. This prestigious university is famous for its excellent institution and has been the Alma Mater for more than seventy Nobel prize winners. In 1973, the university discovered something shocking about its admissions: 44 percent of all men that applied for a PhD position at UC Berkeley were accepted, whilst only 35 percent of women were accepted. This seemed to indicate gender discrimination in the selection process!

Oleksii Klymchuk, Senior Business Analyst at eBay, followed the GAIn Train-The-Trainer program in 2020 through the eCG Analytics University. We interviewed him recently to look back on this experience and learn how he applies his trainer skills in his daily job.

In 2020, the World Economic Forum published “The Future of Jobs Report”, indicating the top declining and emerging roles in the world. According to the publication, while 75 Million (mostly) clerical jobs will decline, 133 million new roles will emerge. Can you guess which roles are dominating the top 10 emerging roles? That’s right – data analysts, data scientists and other data specialists. 

Nowadays, they are everywhere. Netflix uses them to determine what your favorite series is. Facebook uses them to recognize and tag its users in images. Google uses them for their translators, to interpret spoken language and even to develop a chess-playing bot which can defeat any of its human or artificial predecessors.

This week we hosted a training in one of our most promising new topics: Bayesian Networks – a method which shows how different variables together cause an event to occur. The strengths of the method lie in the fact that it can estimate and show the dependencies between all variables in the model and that prior field knowledge by the research team can be formally included in the model.

On October 25th, 2017, Sophia became a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Even though this country has millions of immigrants among its residents, Sophia’s citizenship became world news. She was unique due to the fact that she was not born, but built. Sophia is a robot developed in Hong Kong that traveled around the world after her unveiling in 2016. She not only spoke at the United Nations but also became the first robot in the world to acquire citizenship. She appeared on numerous talk shows, in magazines, and even in videos around the world. Although interviews with Sophia did not always go smoothly, she became world-famous and brought the lightning-fast developments in artificial intelligence back into the spotlight.

Heineken chose to shift its Analytics Translator Training Program to an online version with the Virtual Training Method of GAIn®. This training method – consisting of a virtual classroom with break out rooms and individual assignments – made it possible for Heineken to continue with their learning plan despite COVID-19.

The Global Artificial Intelligence network (GAIn®) is aimed at building the certified skills required to implement new processes, identify opportunities and drive lasting breakthroughs using AI. The GAIn® portfolio consists of more than 60 certified badges, 10 programs, and totals 114 training days.