IIIT-H launches JA Chowdary Faculty Chair on its Foundation Day Celebrations
A new faculty chair backed by technology ecosystem veteran J.A. Chowdary will strengthen research and innovation in emerging technologies at IIIT Hyderabad as the institute enters its 30th year. The JA Chowdary Faculty Chair, established with support from Chowdary, founder of ISF and Junicorn 100K, will have a dedicated corpus. The initiative was announced at the institute’s 29th Foundation Day celebrations on Wednesday, held around the theme “Navigating the Future of AI & Technology.” Cyient Founder Chairman and Board Member and former Nasscom chairman B.V.R. Mohan Reddy was the chief guest and keynote speaker. He stressed the need for stronger academia-industry links to develop talent, drive innovation and translate research into real-world impact. The institute also presented its 2026 Alumni Achiever Awards to CEO of Character.ai Karandeep Anand; founder and CTO of LoadShare Networks Pramod Nair; and principal scientist at ServiceNow and assistant professor at McGill University Siva Reddy Goli.
Engineering The Energy Transition | IIIT Hyderabad’s Roadmap for Al, Research and Innovation
India’s energy transition is becoming increasingly technology-driven, requiring smarter grids, advanced computing, data-led decision-making and skilled professionals. As the country expands renewable energy. green hydrogen and grid automation, stronger links between technology, research and education will be essential. In this conversation, Prof. Sandeep Kumar Shukla, Professor & Director, IIIT Hyderabad, speaks with Nandini Jha of Elets News Network about leveraging Al, computing and research to address India’s energy challenges, from smarter grids and predictive maintenance to green hydrogen and digital SCADA. IIIT Hyderabad’s strengths in machine learning time-series forecasting, signal processing and lot map directly onto this load and renewable-generation forecasting. Our Smart City Living Lab already treats the campus as an instrumented testbed for energy, water and air quality data, which gives students real sensor streams rather than synthetic datasets.
FUN, FUTURE,AND LINGUISTICS
IIIT Hyderabad’s Linguistics
professor Parameswari
Krishnamurthy says that
what constantly excites her
most about the discipline is
that “it’s both creative and logical”. It’s like
mathematics and literature
marrying each other when
on a normal day, people
regard them as two sides of
a coin that do not see eye to
eye. “We use language
everyday and you
unconsciously know that
there are certain facts about
the language which you
don’t know why but you still
use it”, she describes. This year, IIIT
Hyderabad-backed Indian
team won multiple medals
at the International
Linguistics Olympiad
conducted in Romania.
Krishnamurthy, who was
part of it and led the team, explained how these patterns
and problems are truly like
puzzles. In a linguistic
olympiad, it is just full puzzle
mode. Unlike science
olympiads with its theorems,
Krishnamurthy says “there is
some reality” here because
real language data is given to
you with which you try to
gure out patterns. In fact, Krishnamurthy
says that it is like machine
learning where the machine
gets a small amount of data
and it learns the pattern.
AI-generated text found on over 1/3rd of new web pages
The Impact of Al-Generated Text on the Internet, by researchers from Imperial College London, the Internet Archive and Stanford University, found that by mid-2025, roughly 35 per cent of newly published websites were classified as Al-generated or Al-assisted, up from zero before ChatG-P’T’s launch in late 2022.
PJ Narayanan, the former Director of the International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad (IIIT-H), felt that the dominance of AI-generated content on the Internet is a major concern, and these percent-ages will steadily rise as Al tools improve and gain wider adoption. “While humans can only cre-ate content at a fixed, limited pace, individuals and com-panies utilising powerful AI systems can generate data at an exceptionally high rate, practically without limits,” he said. Citing the Pew study, he said, “One direct con-sequence will be on future Al systems, as their training data will contain far more AI-generated material, poten-tially degrading their quality over time. More subtly, people interacting with online content may uncon-sciously alter their writing styles to mimic AI,” he said.
Academic integrity in the ChatGPT era: When the answer is no longer the evidence
Indian universities are redesigning assessments to evaluate student reasoning and accountability. Traditional take-home assignments are being replaced by vivas and in-person examinations. Some institutions integrate AI, grading students on how they direct and verify machine outputs. In Section 3 of AI Campus File, we discovered AI use is becoming a key aspect of academic integrity. The focus is now on demonstrating ownership of thinking rather than just the final answer. Some institutions are tightening the assessment environment through vivas, controlled examinations and AI restrictions. At IIIT Hyderabad, the institution is taking a policy-development route. A faculty committee is working on a responsible-AI policy, with the proposed distinction centred on AI-assisted components versus intellectual responsibility for integration, architecture, validation and explanation. The policy was still awaiting broader faculty and Academic Council deliberation in the supplied response.
IIIT Hyderabad Opens Applications for Cohort 3 of Certificate Program on Engineering Agentic AI Systems
IIIT Hyderabad’s Division of Flexible Learning (DFL) announced that applications are open for Cohort 3 of its 12-week certificate program, “Agentic AI: From Concepts to Practice”. This executive education program is suitable both for early careers as well as experienced working professionals and will transform them from being AI users to AI engineers. It will teach them how to design, build, deploy and operate production-ready agentic AI systems. This intensive 12-week programme, requiring approximately 12 hours of learning per week, is designed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of Agentic AI systems. The programme combines live online interactive classes, recorded lectures, hands-on labs and practical projects, culminating in a planned campus immersion at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad towards the end of the programme.
Team India sweeps Gold and multiple awards at International Linguistics Olympiad at Romania
India’s contingent at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 in Romania has bagged one gold medal, three bronze medals and an honourable mention, continuing the country’s record of winning medals at the international competition for pre-university students, IIIT Hyderabad said in a statement. Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra secured bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar received an honourable mention. The competition brings together school students from more than 40 countries and tests their ability to identify patterns in unfamiliar languages using logic and analytical reasoning. According to the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO), at IIIT Hyderabad, the Indian contingent has so far won 37 medals: six Gold, nine Silver and 22 Bronze, along with nine ‘best solution’ awards, 19 honourable mentions and other team-level honours.
CIE at IIIT Hyderabad Selects Five Deep-Tech Startups for Avishkar Venture Studio Summer Cohort 2026
The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIIT Hyderabad has selected five deep-tech start-ups from more than 110 applications for its six-month Avishkar Venture Studio Summer Cohort 2026. They will receive research support, mentoring, investor access and seed funding of up to Rs 10 lakh. The programme began on July 31 after 20 start-ups in deeptech, medtech, mobility and mediatech pitched before faculty, investors, entrepreneurs and industry experts. Entries were assessed on innovation, market potential, scalability, execution capability and founder strength. The ventures were Comply Ark Solution Private Limited, L2 Aero, Mimansa Play, SentraAuth Technologies and Stylique AI Private Limited, known as Yoko Styles. Their work covers DPDPA compliance, subsurface detection, speech development for children, behavioural biometric authentication and AI-based fashion design.
First Amgen Scholars Program in India launches at IIIT Hyderabad
Amgen today announced the launch of the first Amgen Scholars Program in India at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT Hyderabad), bringing the globally respected undergraduate summer research program to India for the first time. Supported through a two-year commitment from Amgen through summer 2027, the program reflects the company’s long-standing commitment to advancing science education and inspiring future innovators. The inaugural cohort comprises 10 undergraduate scholars, including students from India, Vietnam, Qatar, and Dubai, creating opportunities for scientific collaboration and exchange across Asia. As part of the intensive two-month residential research experience, students will explore artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in fundamental sciences, drug design and discovery, healthcare, cheminformatics, genomics and related areas alongside faculty mentors at IIIT Hyderabad.
He is a case study in deployment: IIIT Hyderabad Director on V Kamakoti’s achievements
India’s semiconductor push has gathered pace in recent years, but according to IIIT Hyderabad Director Prof Sandeep K Shukla, IIT Madras Director Professor V Kamakoti has been working towards indigenous processor design long before it became a national priority. “Prof Kamakoti started working on the SHAKTI processor – which is a RISC-V architecture-based processor, back in the early 2000s, and I recall that his team worked with Bluespec Inc to write the micro-architectural specification of the processor in Bluespec language,” Prof Shukla told India Today. Reflecting on Prof Kamakoti’s role in taking the project from the laboratory to the wider ecosystem, Prof Shukla said SHAKTI represents more than a successful processor project. Rather, he said, it demonstrates how long-term academic research can eventually translate into real-world impact. “Prof V Kamakoti’s role is a good case study in how long-horizon academic research reaches deployment,” he said.