Partnering with NVIDIA to Build Real-World AI Capabilities

The Department of Data Science in the School of Big Data Management introduces NVIDIA international professional course content into its curriculum design. While taking relevant courses, students can complete their training in class and earn official NVIDIA international professional certifications. By combining theoretical instruction with hands-on practice, the department systematically cultivates students' expertise in deep learning and artificial intelligence development. This further enhances their competitiveness in the global AI industry and technology sectors, while joint-driving a distinctive "Soochow AI Smart Campus."

NVIDIA Professional Certification & Training Courses

• NVIDIA Isaac for Accelerated Robotics Certification

• NVIDIA Isaac SO-101 Robot Practical Course

• NVIDIA Rapid Application Development with LLMs Certification

Overview of NVIDIA Professional Certifications & Courses

1. NVIDIA Isaac for Accelerated Robotics (Certification Track)

 What it is: An official professional certification designed by NVIDIA for its AI Robotics Development Platform (NVIDIA Isaac).

• Core Content: Learn how to utilize NVIDIA GPU acceleration techniques to perform robotic simulation and training within virtual environments (Isaac Sim). It covers enabling robots with computer vision, path planning, and training them to walk or manipulate objects using Reinforcement Learning.

• Value: A premier certificate for entering cutting-edge industries such as smart factories, drones, and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs).

2. NVIDIA Isaac SO-101 Robot (Practical Course Track)

• What it is: A hands-on training module combining open-source communities (e.g., Hugging Face's LeRobot) with NVIDIA Isaac to practice Sim-to-Real deployment (transitioning from virtual simulation to real-world execution).

• Understanding SO-101: A classic 6-axis robotic arm featuring base rotation, shoulder, elbow, wrist joints, and a gripper. It operates typically with a "Leader" (master control arm) and "Follower" (driven robotic arm) system.

• Core Content:

  1. Train the robotic arm rapidly in a virtual environment (Isaac Sim) to pick up objects (e.g., moving test tubes in a laboratory).

  2. Overcome the virtual-to-real gap after model training to directly deploy AI models onto physical robotic arms.

  3. Hands-on experience with NVIDIA’s latest GR00T Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model for robotics, enabling robotic arms to comprehend natural human language and execute corresponding actions.

3. NVIDIA Rapid Application Development with LLMs (Certification Track)

• What it is: A professional certification in rapid Large Language Model (LLM) application development issued by the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI).

• Core Content: Learn to leverage existing open-source models (such as Llama), the Hugging Face ecosystem, and tools like LangChain/LangGraph to rapidly build enterprise-grade AI applications.

• Practical Skills: Covers Transformer architectures, multimodal processing (simultaneous text and image analysis), and building AI Agents capable of reasoning and tool calling.

💡 Learning Benefits

Directly aligning with NVIDIA's flagship "Physical AI" technology ecosystem:

• The Mind (LLM Certification): Empowers AI to comprehend human language and logic, constructing the "brain."

• The Body (Isaac Certification & SO-101 Robotic Arm): Enables the AI brain to control physical machinery, learning to manipulate tools and operate in the physical world.

This combination represents a highly valuable, cutting-edge skill set across the fields of data science, artificial intelligence, and automated control.