iHub-Data at IIIT-H launches six-month AI/ML training program for women graduate engineers
iHub-Data at IIIT Hyderabad has announced the launch of a six-month intensive training program in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), aimed at upskilling early-career women engineers. Designed for women graduates who have completed their engineering degrees in the last few years, the program targets participants from Hyderabad and nearby regions seeking advanced knowledge and research-oriented skills in AI and ML. The program combines strong theoretical grounding with hands-on tutorials and applied learning experiences. Classes will be held every Monday at the IIIT Hyderabad campus, offering participants a collaborative and immersive academic environment. The curriculum spans both classical and contemporary AI/ML techniques, equipping learners with problem-solving skills relevant to industry as well as research applications. Speaking on the initiative, Dr C K Raju, Head of Educational Programs at iHub-Data, noted that the continuing education programs offered by the hub have seen strong outcomes in the past.
CIE: Changing the city’s innovation DNA
CIE@IIITH is now a space for people who wanted to explore their ideas alongside their day jobs. The quality of technology emerging from IIITH is high because the institute has invested in building strong research labs over a long period of time. This depth of research gives credibility and validation to both faculty members and founders working with us. In many cases, founders already have a basic solution or technical prototype. Our role is to help them refine that technology, strengthen it, and make it robust enough to address real product-market fit challenges. Software-based research is generally easier to translate into products because it is more agile and easier to iterate on. Hardware, especially research-led hardware, is much harder. Research is not always conducted with immediate societal or market needs in mind. Often, it is about pushing the boundaries of technology. While this leads to beautiful research outcomes, it does not always translate into market-ready products. Hardware research is particularly challenging because it is less flexible and harder to integrate quickly into existing solution frameworks.
Prof. Ramesh Loganathan keynote speaker at Career Clarity Conclave & Expo – 2026
Resonance Colleges, Hyderabad, organized the Career Clarity Conclave & Expo – 2026, a focused career-guidance and awareness initiative for students and parents on career options after Class 12, today at the JNTU Auditorium, Hyderabad. The day-long conclave featured 5 structured expert sessions with interactive student–parent Q&A. Ramesh Loganathan (Dean, International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad) message to the students was “Choose Computer Science based on aptitude and fundamentals—strong problem-solving will always stay relevant.” The conclave brought together leading voices from premier institutions and industry to provide practical guidance on career pathways, course selection, competitive exam direction, admissions awareness, and emerging opportunities across Engineering, Medicine, Science, Technology, and allied domains. Each session included one keynote speaker and two panel members, enabling students to gain multi-perspective clarity and real-world insights.
IIITH hosted Urban AI Forum as official pre-summit event of India AI Impact Summit 2026
International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad hosted the Urban AI Forum: Rethinking Cities by Leveraging Artificial Intelligence, an official pre-summit event of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, in partnership with Bordeaux Métropole, NASSCOM and iSPIRT on 29 January. The forum on campus brought together policymakers, academics, industry leaders and civil society representatives to explore the transformative role of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of cities. The Urban AI Forum served as a platform for dialogue on how AI-driven technologies can enhance urban governance, sustainability, inclusivity and democratic participation. The event aimed to move the conversation beyond conventional smart city narratives towards a deeper understanding of Urban AI as a critical enabler of data-driven, citizen-centric urban transformation. The programme featured two panel discussions and a thematic presentation highlighting global and local perspectives on AI-enabled urban development.
IIITH’s platform for mapping news and urban livability
A multilingual, spatially mapped news aggregation engine developed at IIITH is evolving into a powerful tool to track governance and the quality of urban life across the country, with Hyderabad as its first live testbed. In the world of e-governance, pictures often speak louder than reports. Maps, charts and visual dashboards help administrators see patterns such as distribution of government initiatives, where crimes are rising, which districts face repeated civic issues, and how different regions compare in real time – all that would otherwise remain buried in spreadsheets. By turning complex data into intuitive visual form, pictorial and spatial representations have become a cornerstone of modern, data-driven governance. It is this belief – good governance begins with good visualisation – that lies at the heart of a new research platform being developed at IIITH. The project began as a spatial mapping of a news aggregation engine: a system designed to collect news from multiple newspapers, translate it across Indian languages, and plot every report on a map to show where issues were emerging across the state.
Prof. P J Narayanan Joins PM Modi’s AI Roundtable on Ethical and Scalable AI
Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi interacted with CEOs and Experts working in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), at his residence at Lok Kalyan Marg on 29 January. Prime Minister highlighted that India has a unique proposition of scale, diversity and democracy, due to which the world trusts India’s digital infrastructure. In line with his vision of ‘AI for All’, the Prime Minister stated that we need to create an impact with our technology as well as inspire the world. He also urged the CEOs and experts to make India a fertile destination for all global AI efforts. The high-level roundtable saw participation from CEOs of companies working in AI including Wipro, TCS, HCL Tech, Zoho Corporation, LTI Mindtree, Jio Platforms Ltd, AdaniConnex, Nxtra Data and Netweb Technologies along with experts from International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay. Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw and Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri Jitin Prasada also participated in the interaction.
Prof. Sandeep K Shukla shares his expectations from education budget 2026
As India prepares for the Union Budget 2026-27, education leaders across schools, universities, research institutions, and the skilling ecosystem are calling for a decisive shift – from incremental funding to outcome-driven investment. With the government’s long-term vision of Viksit Bharat 2047 in focus, stakeholders argue that education must be treated not merely as social expenditure, but as strategic national capacity-building. From improving school learning outcomes and implementing NEP 2020 in full, to building innovation-led universities, accelerating translational research, fostering entrepreneurship, and making digital education more affordable. Prof. Sandeep K Shukla, Director, IIIT Hyderabad says geopolitical uncertainty makes indigenous capability-building unavoidable. “Without strong investment in higher education and R&D, India cannot build semiconductors, secure operating systems or advanced manufacturing,” he says, adding that faculty development must move beyond token programs to sustained, outcome-oriented training.
IIITH’s Drishti Library: A digital initiative for visually impaired students
For most students, accessing textbooks is routine. For visually challenged students, it often means dealing with missing Braille editions, poor audio recordings, or expensive software. A new digital initiative developed at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is now working to change that. The initiative, called Drishti Library, aims to make higher-education textbooks available in Braille and audiobook formats using artificial intelligence and language technologies. The project has been developed by researcher Krishna Tulsiyan under the guidance of Professors C V Jawahar and Gurpreet Singh Lehal and is part of the Government of India’s Bhashini mission, which focuses on building AI-based language tools for Indian languages. The platform was recently unveiled at a symposium on Language AI for Accessibility. It currently focuses on Punjabi language textbooks and is gradually expanding to other Indian languages and academic disciplines. Drishti Library uses optical character recognition (OCR) systems developed under a national consortium to scan and convert textbooks into accessible formats.
IIITH hosted Winter Dialogue on Responsible AI for Healthcare Innovation
IIITH hosted the Winter Dialogue on Responsible AI for Synergistic Excellence (RAISE) as an official pre-summit event of the AI Impact Summit 2026 on 20 January. The four-city Winter Dialogue series is organised by Ashoka University and NIMS Jaipur jointly with IIITH and C-CAMP Bangalore. The one-day dialogue brought together leaders from healthcare, technology, policy, academia, and startups to explore how AI can responsibly transform healthcare delivery through intelligent, accessible, and human centred technologies. With HealthTech and AI as the central theme, the Winter Dialogue examined opportunities for AI-powered healthcare innovation, challenges in building and scaling healthcare startups, and pathways for taking Indian health AI solutions to global markets. Prof. SK Shukla said, “As AI becomes embedded in healthcare decision-making, the focus must move beyond technological capability to responsibility, trust, and real-world impact. Platforms like the Winter Dialogue are essential for aligning innovation with ethical, patient-centric outcomes.”
IIITH researchers develop an IoT-based low cost UPS detection device
IIITH doesn’t just believe in translational research. It walks the talk as evidenced by its latest Best Paper award-winning research that has resulted in the development of an IoT-based UPS detection device at COMSNETS-2026 held in Bangalore. The idea for a low-cost UPS monitoring system at IIITH did not begin in a laboratory or a funding proposal. It began with a familiar frustration – raised by Prakash Nayak, a campus IT staffer who was tired of equipment failures with no clear explanation. Power outages were happening. Servers were restarting. Despite the installation of UPS units everywhere, no one could say with certainty what the UPS systems were actually doing when the lights went out. That real-world problem became the starting point for a research project that has now resulted in a ₹2,000 IoT-based device capable of tracking UPS behaviour during outages with near-second precision. The research was documented in a paper titled, “Low-cost IoT-based Downtime Detection for UPS and Behaviour Analysis,” by authors Sannidhya Gupta, Prakash Nayak, and Prof. Sachin Chaudhari.