Xavier School of Engineering and Technology (XSET) at St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata (SXUK), organised a guest lecture on “An Introduction to Machine Learning Algorithms and their Applications” on September 24, 2026. The resource person was Prof. Prasanta Kumar Jana, Professor, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. 

The lecture began with an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its growing applications in everyday life. Prof. Jana highlighted practical examples, including the use of pesticide drones in agriculture and IoT-enabled systems for detecting poisonous gas leaks in mines. He also discussed the expanding role of IoT in healthcare, transportation, communication and digital devices.

The session subsequently focused on machine learning. Prof. Jana explained that industries, business, agriculture, media and healthcare are among the major sources of data that drive contemporary machine-learning technologies. He also introduced three major learning approaches—supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning.

Students were familiarised with key machine-learning algorithms, including Support Vector Machines (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) classifiers and decision trees, with practical explanations of their functioning and applications. The programme concluded with an interactive session.

Dr. Tuhin Utsab Paul