Vineet Gandhi of IIIT Hyderabad, leader of the team that developed an app that converts slurred speech into clear speech or uses a camera to analyse lip movements and subtle throat vibrations to generate intelligible speech. The delay is only a few hundred milliseconds, and the developers are now focusing on regional languages. A whisper. A few slurred words. For those who suffer from dysarthria, a motor speech disorder, basic communication is a challenge, indelibly affecting both their professional and personal life. But now a new innovation based on artificial intelligence (AI) and developed in India could be life-changing. Led by associate professor Vineet Gandhi a team has developed a simple app that can help people talk as an audio translation converts the speaker’s voice almost in real-time. The app can either convert slurred speech into clear, natural-sounding speech or use a camera to analyse lip movements and subtle throat vibrations to generate intelligible speech.

Among the 15,700 proposals submitted nationwide, ten research projects from the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) emerged as winners of the prestigious Advanced Research Grant (ARG) – the Anusandhan National Research Foundation’s (ANRF) flagship funding scheme – an extraordinary showing that underscores the institute’s growing influence in cutting-edge science and technology. The Advanced Research Grant by ANRF, India’s national funding body for research and innovation that has been set up by the Government of India, is designed to support ambitious, investigator-driven research projects led by established researchers working on novel, high-impact ideas. From foundational research to real-world innovation, the selected projects spotlight the depth, diversity, and ambition of IIIT-Hyderabad’s research ecosystem. The selected projects cover areas including quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, communication systems, speech technology and climate research.

As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and digital finance redraws economic boundaries, the risks beneath our connected world are growing just as fast. At IIIT-H, the Security and Privacy (SyPy) Research Group is working behind the scenes to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, defend emerging technologies, and build the foundations of digital trust. “We live in an online world,” says Prof. Ankit Gangwal, continuing, “Our savings move through digital wallets. Our faces unlock our phones. Our conversations are filtered through machine learning systems that predict what we want before we type it. Every swipe, tap, and transaction depends on layers of invisible code. But what happens when that code is compromised?” Prof. Gangwal’s group, is not just asking exactly that question but working relentlessly to answer it. “To secure the future, we must first understand the vulnerabilities of the present,” he remarks. Security failures rarely announce themselves loudly at first. They hide in edge cases, in overlooked assumptions, in code that “should work.”