A project led by the University of Saskatchewan will be the first graduate level program in Canada to train software engineers in analytics.

It also includes the universities of Calgary, Alberta and British Columbia along with industry partners locally, nationally and internationally.

USask Computer Science professor and research lead, Dr. Chanchal Roy, says undergrads, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows will analyze massive amounts of data to figure out what the issues are and come up with better software for the business they are paired with.

Some of the companies involved are Nutrien, Microsoft Research and Vendasta.

Dr. Roy hopes having the students get to know the business partners they are working with will entice them to stay in Saskatchewan after they graduate, because right now, many head elsewhere and there aren’t enough skilled IT workers in the province.

To emphasize the importance of improving software, Dr. Chanchal points out that around the world in 2017, just over 600 software bugs cost around $1.7-trillion in damage, affecting 3.7-billion people and 314 companies.

He adds one of the reasons for the 2 Boeing 737 Max plane crashes in October of 2018 and March of 2019 was computer issues.

In total, 346 people were killed in those crashes.