Bahu Bhasa 2025 (6 to 8 November 2025)
IIIT Hyderabad is hosting Bahu Bhasa 2025 from 6 – 8 November 2025, a three-day event celebrating India’s linguistic diversity through the lens of policy, technology, and community. The event will bring together academics, technologists, policymakers, open knowledge enthusiasts and community organisations to deliberate on the future of Indian languages in the digital age. A key area of focus is the challenges and opportunities for low-resource and underrepresented languages, covering themes of language documentation, digital preservation, and open knowledge ecosystems. This event will also serve as a space to map emerging issues and ongoing work on digital language conservation, revitalisation and development, and identify actionable areas for collaboration.
Key themes for discussion include:
● Policy: This theme will discuss the role of policy and planning in shaping linguistic diversity and addressing barriers. This includes recent policy developments across sectors such as technology, education and governance, and their impact on everyday use of Indian languages.
● Technology: This theme will explore how digital technologies mediate meaningful access and use of Indian languages, what are existing infrastructural gaps and the impact of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. It will specifically focus on advancements in Indic language computing, localisation and open knowledge projects contributing to the same.
● Community: This theme will unpack language as lived culture and social experiment, through its everyday experiences and creative expression. In addition to a showcase and critical discussion on community-led projects on language documentation, preservation and revitalization, it will also explore ways to foreground community-led work on Indian languages.
This three-day event would comprise a mix of sessions across formats such as roundtable and panel discussions, workshops, demonstrations, and a fireside conversation.
Organised by the Open Knowledge Initiatives (OKI), RCTS in collaboration with the Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), IIIT Hyderabad.
Megathon 2025 (11 and 12 October 2025)
Get Ready to Innovate: Megathon is Back!
Prepare for a weekend of intense creativity as E-Cell, IIIT Hyderabad proudly presents its flagship event, Megathon 2025: The Deccan Edition – powered by CHUBB, in association with Qualcomm and Bhashini. Mark your calendars for October 11th and 12th for Hyderabad’s largest student-run hackathon. This year’s event celebrates the spirit of building in Hyderabad with an impact that extends to the world, bringing together the brightest student minds from across the country to solve real-world challenges.
Since its launch in 2016, Megathon has become the ultimate breeding ground for entrepreneurial spirit at IIIT Hyderabad and beyond. It’s more than just a coding competition; it’s a 24-hour immersion into collaborative problem-solving and entrepreneurial thinking. Building on the momentum of last year’s event, which saw over 650 innovators compete for a ₹4 lakh prize pool, this year promises to be even bigger, offering a record-breaking ₹6.5 lakh prize pool alongside invaluable opportunities for mentorship, networking, and hands-on learning.
Whether you’re a seasoned coder, a design enthusiast, or a business visionary, Megathon is the platform to transform your ideas into reality. Participants will have the chance to tackle compelling problem statements, develop prototypes, and pitch their solutions to a panel of industry experts. Join us to Meet, Ideate, and Hack. For more information, visit https://megathon.in/
Truth Without Apology by Sri. Acharya Prashant (27 September 2025)
The Student Life Committee (SLC) in coordination with Outreach organised a special talk Truth Without Apology by renowned philosopher and author, Sri. Acharya Prashant b 27 September at KRB Auditorium.
Acharya Prashant is a globally renowned philosopher, social reformer, and national bestselling author of over 160 books. An IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he has been honoured with prestigious awards for his contributions to philosophy, social reform, and environmentalism. With over 90 million followers worldwide, he is recognised as one of the most impactful spiritual voices of our time.
TechForward September 2025 Edition (AI for Retail Tech and Customer Experience) – 19 September 2025
IIITH’s TechForward research seminar series is an academia-industry confluence around emerging technologies. Deep insights, directional talks and industry/business outlooks from highly accomplished thought leaders on one theme every month. The September edition explores AI for Retail Tech and Customer Experience.
Those interested in attending the seminar can register at https://tinyurl.com/4ss47wa7
28th Foundation Day – 2 September 2025
IIIT Hyderabad will be celebrating its 28th Foundation Day on 2 September with a special focus on Cybersecurity. Dr. Jitender, Director General of Police (DPG) will be the chief guest at this momentous event. The events lined up for the day are:
– Talk by Prof. Sandeep Kumar Shukla, Director on IIITH: Vision and way forward
– Inauguration of Cyber MANTHAN Center and TGCSB’s Vyuha Lab by Shikha Goel, IPS DG, Director Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB)
– Awarding Alumni Achievers Awards 2025 to Naveena Yanamala and Manish Jain
TechForward August 2025 Edition (States Cyber Security Measures) – 29 August 2025
IIITH’s TechForward research seminar series is an academia-industry confluence around emerging technologies. Deep insights, directional talks & industry/business outlooks from highly accomplished thought leaders on one theme every month. The August edition explores States Cyber Security Measures at ICCC building , banjara hills on 29 August.
Those interested in attending the seminar can register at https://tinyurl.com/4ss47wa7
Human Sciences Research Centre talk by Dr. Anisha Palat
Dr. Anisha Palat, Paul Mellon Centre, London gave a talk on How We Look at Animals: Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Frames on 13 August at N 119, Nilgiri Block. Summary of the talk as explained by Dr. Anisha Palat.
This talk explores the intersections of animals and photography in South Asia, using colonial-era hunting photographs as a lens through which to examine shifting human-animal relations. Colonial photographs, where animals were often depicted as trophies, specimens, or spectacles, played a key role in establishing imperial narratives of control over nature and the nonhuman, and in showing hunting as an act of celebration and triumph. This talk examines whether a reconsideration and review of such photographs provides a space with which to rethink anthropocentric and imperial legacies. It also considers how contemporary photographers engage with animals, and the ethics, responsibility, and connection of contemporary images to their colonial predecessors. In today’s world and digital age, how do we look at animals, and why does it matter?
Dr Anisha Palat holds a Ph.D in History of Art from the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research explored the relationship between the cow and caste in contemporary Indian art, highlighting how these themes manifest in various artistic practices. Anisha has presented her research at conferences and workshops globally. She currently serves as convenor of ‘Unfinished Visions: A Collaborative Research Series on South Asian Visual Culture’ at the University of Edinburgh. Her previous role as convenor of the Climate & Colonialism Reading Group at the Paul Mellon Centre, London, involved thinking with climate and related themes. In addition to her research, Anisha was part of the editorial team for The South Asianist journal, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh.
TechForward July 2025 Edition (AI in Energy Transition)
IIITH’s TechForward research seminar series is an academia-industry confluence around emerging technologies. Deep insights, directional talks & industry/business outlooks from highly accomplished thought leaders on one theme every month. The July edition explores AI in Energy Transition at GE Vernova Hyderabad Technology Centre on 30 July. To attend register at https://tinyurl.com/4ss47wa7
KOHLI DAY 2025 (19 March 2025)
The Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems (KCIS) commemorated the birth anniversary of Sri F C Kohli with the Inauguration of IIITH’s Centre for Digital Technologies in Healthcare (CDiTH) and a keynote by Dr. D Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman & Chief of Gastroenterology, AIG Hospitals on 19 March.
Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Elisa Bertino (4 March 2025)
Speaker: Elisa Bertino, Samuel Conte Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.
Title: Applying Machine Learning to to securing cellular networks
Date: 4 March 2025
Summary of the talk: Cellular network security is more critical than ever, given the increased complexity of these networks and the numbers of applications that depend on them, including telehealth, remote education, ubiquitous robotics and autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and Industry 4.0. In this talk, I will first present a comprehensive threat analysis in the context of 5G cellular networks to give a concrete example of the magnitude of the problem of cellular network security. Then, I will present two specific applications of ML techniques for the security of cellular networks. The first application focuses on the use of natural language processing techniques to the problem of detecting inconsistencies in the “natural language specifications” of cellular network protocols. The second application addresses the design of an anomaly detection system able to detect the presence of malicious base stations and determine the type of attack. Then I’ll conclude with a discussion on research directions.
About Elisa Bertino: Elisa Bertino is a Samuel Conte Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. She serves as Director of the Purdue Cyberspace Security Lab (Cyber2Slab). Prior to joining Purdue, she was a professor and department head at the Department of Computer Science and Communication of the University of Milan. Her recent research focuses on security and privacy of cellular networks and IoT systems, and on edge analytics for cybersecurity. Elisa Bertino is a Fellow member of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. She received the 2002 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award for “For outstanding contributions to database systems and database security and advanced data management systems”, the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Tsutomu Kanai Award for “Pioneering and innovative research contributions to secure distributed systems”, the 2019-2020 ACM Athena Lecturer Award, and the 2021 IEEE 2021 Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award. She is currently serving as ACM Vice-president.