Prof. Sandeep Shukla appointed New Director of IIITH
The Governing Council of the IIITH, has announced that Prof. Sandeep Shukla from IIT Kanpur will assume charge as the new director this August. The announcement was made during the IIITH convocation ceremony held on 12 July. The current Director, Prof. P J Narayanan, is set to step down from his position soon, paving the way for Prof. Shukla to take over the institute’s leadership. Prof. Shukla is widely recognised for his expertise in cybersecurity, embedded systems, and blockchain technologies. His appointment is seen as a significant step for IIITH, given his extensive experience and contributions in these cutting-edge fields. In his remarks, Professor Sandeep Shukla expressed his honour at being entrusted with the responsibility of leading IIITH as its next Director, stating that it is a matter of great pride to take on this role. Prof. P J Narayanan, the director of IIITH, will step down in Aug after 12 years at the helm. Taking over as director will be Sandeep Shukla from IIT Kanpur. “After I step down as director, I’ll continue working as a faculty member at the institute,” said Narayanan.
IIITH celebrates 24th Convocation 2025
IIITH conducted its 24th convocation and graduated 529 students. Vineeth Bhat, B.Tech (Honours) in CSE was awarded the IIITH gold medal in recognition of his outstanding academic performance. Revanth Kumar Gundam, (B.Tech in Computer Science and MS in CL by Research) was awarded Best All-rounder for his notable contributions in academics, extra-curricular activities and IIITH services. Pradeep Kumar Pal (Ph.D in CNS) received the Banyan Award for consistent voluntary efforts relating to student affairs. Commending the graduating students, Prof. P J Narayanan, said, “The graduating students of 2025 are joining the professional world formally today, out to chart their own paths in this increasingly competitive and complicated world. I am confident you possess highly useful skills in your area and immense creativity to apply those to different problems. Above all, I urge you to travel your life’s journey with deep concern and caring toward the society around you. We expect the best from you in the coming years and are confident you will exceed our expectations”.
AIIMS Bibinagar and CIE at IIITH host AI for healthcare hackathon
AIIMS Bibinagar and CIE (Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, at IIIT Hyderabad) hosted the MedCare AI Impact Hackathon — a unique innovation challenge designed to empower doctors, medical students, and health researchers to tackle real-world clinical problems through deep tech research-led innovation. The day-long event saw participation from 17 shortlisted teams, representing doctors, medical faculty, researchers, and students. The program aimed to bridge clinical expertise with AI-driven research and development by nurturing healthcare innovations directly from the field. Launched as a grassroots initiative by AIIMS Bibinagar, the hackathon focused on building clinical tools, diagnostics, patient care apps, and new care delivery models. Participants received intensive 1:1 mentorship, attended expert lectures, and collaborated with IIIT Hyderabad faculty and startups during the immersive sessions.
IIIT Hyderabad shines at CVPR 2025 with over 7 Research Papers Across Tracks
A large contingent from IIITH’s Computer Vision Lab participated at the Conference on Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) last month in Nashville. Computer vision researchers aim to have a paper accepted in CVPR to have validation of the quality of research work, its significance and a strong indicator of its potential for impact. CVPR is regarded as one of the top 3 prestigious conferences on computer vision and is ranked second (only to Nature) overall by Google Scholar Metrics outperforming several leading journal publications. It typically has a less than 30% acceptance rate for all papers and less than 5% for oral presentations. CVIT at IIITH has been associated with the prestigious conference dating all the way back to 2008 when Prof. CV Jawahar was selected as an ‘Outstanding Reviewer’. Since then the lab has been marking its presence at the conference annually with a number of paper presentations. This year too, a large contingent from IIITH stood out for their research haul of over 7 papers.
Tech professors turn startup founders
Indian research institutions are witnessing a surge in professor-founded startups, driven by a growing acceptance of entrepreneurship and the desire to translate research into real-world impact. Venture capitalists are increasingly investing in these ventures, recognizing their potential for globally competitive deep tech innovation. Success stories and supportive incubation centers are further encouraging academics to explore entrepreneurial opportunities. For years, India’s leading research institutions engaged in cutting-edge research and development, much of which remained confined to labs. That’s beginning to change as faculty members are turning entrepreneurs, and investors are taking note. At IISc, IITs, IIITs and BITS Pilani, professor-founded startups have seen a 20-30% year-on-year increase. Venture capitalists (VCs) are viewing these ventures as fertile ground for intellectual property (IP)-heavy, globally competitive deep tech innovation.
IIITH TechForward Seminar Series Marks 12 Successful Editions
IIIT Hyderabad’s TechForward Research Seminar Series, an academia-industry confluence around emerging technologies is currently in its 12th edition, having successfully completed a year of deep insights, directional talks, and industry/business outlooks from highly accomplished thought leaders, on one theme every month. The talks were converted into features that are compiled into a monthly dispatch as a ready reckoner for technology directions.The research seminar series covered themes across various domains such as computer vision, artificial information, robotics, quantum computing, AI on the Edge, healthcare, tech in financial services, software architecture, LLMs, sustainable mobility and agentic AI. Over the past year, IIITH collaborated with leading companies such as Qualcomm, ISB, Google, GoldmanSachs, Bosch, Llyods Technology Centre, Meta, Accenture Evernorth Health Services, ZF India and ServiceNow.
IIITH and KIET Sign MoU to Launch Smart City Living Lab with Integrated Net-Zero Dashboard at KIET Campus
In a significant step toward accelerating urban innovation, Smart City Research Centre at IIITH and KIET signed a MoU on 17 June 2025 at the KIET Campus to support the Kakinada Smart City Mission. The collaboration aims to bring cutting-edge research, real-time urban solutions, and emerging technologies to the forefront by establishing a Smart City Living Lab at the KIET campus and extending the same to Kakinada Smart City. The initiative, launched in the presence of the Kakinada District Collector Shri Sagili Shan Mohan and other dignitaries, marks a new chapter in bridging academia, government, and technology for smarter, more sustainable cities. The lab will serve as a collaborative ecosystem to support the research, development, and deployment of smart city solutions, enabling students, researchers, and city stakeholders to tackle practical urban challenges.
AI advancements in the mobility space
At the recently concluded TechForward series seminar on AI in Vehicles, Prof. C V Jawahar described the mobility-related research efforts being undertaken at IIITH. Here’s a summarized version. At IIITH, we have been aiming to solve problems on Indian roads and driving conditions using data-driven technologies. With the help of techniques from machine learning, computer vision, computer graphics, computational sensing, and allied areas, we have been creating solutions and transferring these solutions across diverse practical conditions on roads. One of the research studies that was undertaken includes early anticipation of driver actions before the onset of a manoeuvre, such as a turn, a lane change, a sudden halt and so on. When you know the driver in front of you is going to take a right turn without indicating with a signal, you anticipate and get ready for it perhaps by slowing down or changing lanes.
Prof. P J Narayanan on IIITH’s Unique Research-led Curriculum
In an interview with Business World team, Prof. P J Narayanan describes the industrial, social and healthcare applications of the translational research being carried out at the institute. Answering a question, Prof. P J Narayanan says, IIITH has been a leader in AI and related areas through KCIS that was endowed by TCS in 2015. Our strengths include all core Al areas including machine learning, cognitive science, data analytics, natural language processing, speech processing and synthesis, robotics, computer vision, etc. Building on the foundations of academic research, we have been focusing on applied and translational research in the past several years. This involves research with specific industrial or social application as the focus. We established two entities – INAI and RCTS – for large-scale applied research. The Technology Innovation Hub established by the DST at the institute has data-driven applications as its focus and works synergistically with the institute’s research centres and labs.
IIITH based BharatGen team launches Patram: India’s First Vision-Language Foundational Model for Documents
A team from IIITH has introduced Patram-7B-Instruct, India’s first vision-language foundational model designed specifically for complex document understanding. This landmark achievement is part of the BharatGen initiative, a government-supported program to develop India-centric Multimodal Large Language Models, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Patram-7B-Instruct is a 7-billion parameter AI model trained on a large, diverse corpus of Indian documents. It can analyze scanned or photographed documents and respond accurately to natural language instructions, making it a versatile tool for varied applications across sectors. Despite its relatively compact size, Patram surpasses larger international models such as DeepSeek-VL-2 on prominent benchmarks like DocVQA and VisualMRC.