Staying true its long-standing tradition of leading innovation, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IITKGP) is setting up a Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Research with seed funding from Capillary Technologies Limited.
With a funding of ₹5.64 crores, the center will reportedly encompass key areas in AI and its kindred such as training, research, education, projects, entrepreneurship and incubation. The funding is aimed to be utilised for establishing coursework design, computing infrastructure,software and hardware simulation platforms
“IIT KGP has developed a deep expertise in the overall area of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Sciences and its applications in several critical domains over a long period of time, among others. It is time that we lead this initiative in AI to fulfill the need of AI technologies in the 21st century” said PP Chakrabarti, director, IIT KGP.
Stressing on Capillary Technologies’ initiative towards supporting promising AI ventures, Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO at Capillary Technologies said, “The way we look at AI, it is the future — not just in our industry but in every aspect of life. We wish to support the envisaged programmes of the AI Center in various ways. Over the last few years, we have invested over ₹40 lakh annually in various research projects that hold the promise of shaping the future of our industry. We wish to continue our association with IIT KGP by investing a similar amount over a period of time to make this AI Center a truly industry-leading one.”
The curriculum will be designed by the faculty of IIT KGP, experts from Capillary and specialists in deep learning from the industry. The curriculum will comprise of industrial training programs, short-term credit courses, and a certificate program for internal and external students. Capped at 70 members per batch, the program will see implementation in Kharagpur and Bengaluru initially and is expected to spread to other cities gradually.
“We are opening up a mechanism where people can run courses from multiple locations. We are looking at one year certificate program spread across four quarters for working professionals or have just graduated,” added Chakrabarti.
IIT KGP already boasts of AI specialist in areas such as financial analytics, industrial automation, digital healthcare, intelligent transportation system, agricultural internet of things and analytics, big data analytics for rural development, intelligent urban infrastructure, and safety critical cyber-physical systems, among others.
On the collaborative efforts of these experts, Pallab Dasgupta, dean, Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy at IIT KGP, added, “These experts will work towards developing new AI technologies for various domains and also aligning them with these domains through custom applications, interfacing, training etc.”
