Prof. P J Narayanan walks us through the technological developments that have taken place over the last few decades in the movie making process. We’ve witnessed a digital transformation in almost every aspect of life, like the way digital transactions in the monetary world have replaced cash, the filmmaking world is no different. There too, we moved from the analog to the digital world. One no longer carries boxes of reels to theatres for screening; content is unlocked perhaps by a password and streamed via the click of a button. In this way, movies have been transformed albeit with the ultimate goal of entertaining people. From the first commercial movie created by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 to the first entirely computer-animated film, The Toy Story in 1995, we now have a whole spectrum of things such as live action, VFX, CGI, some digital content mixed with actual footage and so on. Today’s movies are way more sophisticated than what was possible in 1995. When these films started coming, the technologists thought that they would make all the movies and that there was no need for directors and other creative folks.

India’s student team has pulled off a historic performance at at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL-2025), held in Taiwan from July 21 to 27, with all four team members winning individual honours — a first for India since it began participating in 2009. Competing against 227 students from 42 countries. The Indian team consisted of: V Surendran (Chennai) – Gold medal; A Misra (Delhi NCR) – Bronze medal; Nandagovind Anurag (Hyderabad) – Honourable mention and Siripurapu Bhuvan (Hyderabad) – Honourable mention. They were selected through the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO) and underwent intensive training at IIIT Hyderabad under Prof. Parameswari Krishnamurthy, a long-time academic mentor for the Indian team. IOL is one of the 13 major International Science Olympiads. It tests logic, pattern recognition, and analytical thinking using rare or under-documented languages — no prior language knowledge required. Instead, students must crack linguistic puzzles using data and deduction, like decoding grammar rules from scratch.

Prof. P J Narayanan, Director, International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad inaugurated the “FabLab” at IIIT Hyderabad campus today. The lab has been made possible by the support from the Department of Science and Technology, under the Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence (PURSE) scheme. International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad has been granted the project for the development of biosensors and bio-actuators focused on healthcare applications. Some of the microfabrication tools available in the facility include UV lithography, sputtering, spin coater and vacuum chamber, along with material characterization tools such as Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) and optical profilometer. The facility also consists of semiconductor IC characterization tools such as probe station, Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), Vector Signal Generator (VSG), signal analyzer and oscilloscope, with the capability of supporting measurements in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band.