AIC-IIITH has launched the 3rd Akash EPAM Social Impact Innovation Program (ESIIP) to support GreenTech startups in areas like Green Energy, Smart Cities, Climate Tech, Sustainable Agriculture, and Mobility. The program also leverages IIITH’s strong research ecosystem to drive cutting-edge innovation in areas like AI/ML, Robotics, GIS etc to advance India’s UN SDG commitments with a focus on Climate Action (SDG 13). The program recognizes the importance of research-led tech and entrepreneurial innovation towards sustainable climate action. Startup-led innovation is a critical driver of climate action, especially in developing countries like India. Yet an analysis by Cambridge Associates shows that Emerging Market Greentech startups attract only 9% of total investment in the sector. As per AIC-IIITH’s research, a mere ~0.2% of total CSR spending has been spent on Innovation.

SubtasksWhere, IIIT Hyderabad’s winning team of competitive programmers climbed to 73rd world ranking in the ACM –ICPC World Finals, gaining a place on the Honors list , for solving 6 or more programming problems. It was a sweet sense of accomplishment for the IIIT Hyderabad coding team comprising of Shiven Sinha, Hari Aakash K and Sushil Raaja Umasudhan, at the recently concluded 2025 ICPC World Finals. Hosted by ADA University at Baku in Azerbaijan, the algorithmic programming competition challenges university students to grapple complex real-world problems within a tight timeframe. The global contest featuring 73,083 students from 103 countries, tested the creativity, teamwork and problem solving skills of 140 shortlisted teams from 3,424 universities. Held between August 31 and September 5, the ICPC venues included three iconic architectural wonders including the futuristically designed Heydar Aliyev Center by Ar. Zaha Hadid, the Baku Convention Center and the Baku Expo Center.

From taking root as a foundational step towards autonomous driving research, the Indian Driving Dataset continues to evolve to tackle a plethora of problems that are India-specific. Two wheelers, 3-wheelers – both motorized and non-motorized, trucks, cars, pedestrians, animals and more make up the heterogeneity that is uniquely Indian. It is this unstructured feature of Indian traffic that prompted researchers at International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) to address research in autonomous navigation a little differently. They were quick to recognise that in the West, such technology catered to well-delineated roads, well-defined categories of vehicles, adherence to traffic rules and so on. “Most of the smart vehicles are designed for Western roads. They are tested, calibrated and verified on Western roads. We knew our roads are different but how different? We wanted to capture those differences objectively and decided to begin with the creation of a dataset,” explains Prof. C V Jawahar of the beginnings of the Indian Driving Dataset.