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.
Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Rajesh P N Rao (9 December 2024)
Speaker: Prof. Rajesh P N Rao, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Title: The Predictive Brain: An Active Predictive Coding Framework for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
Date: 9 December 2024
Summary of the talk: More than half the volume of the human brain is occupied by the neocortex which has delineated roles of visual perception in the visual cortex, action in the motor cortex, cognition in the prefrontal cortex, etc. However, recent experiments indicate that almost all cortical areas, even those traditionally labelled as sensory, are modulated by upcoming actions. Parallel data from anatomical studies point to major outputs from almost all cortical areas to sub-cortical centers that control the body. In this talk, Prof Rao will present the active predictive coding framework, which puts actions center stage in natural and artificial intelligence. He will review the Bayesian brain hypothesis, and then discuss predictive coding, a specific implementation of the Bayesian brain hypothesis that acknowledges cortical anatomy and physiology. This sets the stage for his more recent active predictive coding model, which suggests new explanations for how we recognize an object and its parts using eye movements, why perception seems stable despite eye movements, how we learn compositional representations of the world, how we plan complex actions by composing sequences of sub-goals and simpler actions, and how we form episodic memories of our sensory-motor experiences and learn abstract concepts such as a family tree. The talk will also briefly cover his work on brain co-processors that use artificial intelligence to interact directly with the brain to restore or augment human function.
About the speaker: Prof. Rajesh P N Rao is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang Professor in the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He is also the co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology, adjunct professor in the Bioengineering department, and faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UW. His research interests span computational neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence.