Prof. Hussain wins YFRF for sleep monitoring app
The selective national research fellowship is backing the development of a low-cost smart mattress by Prof Aftab Hussain that can detect falls, track sleep, and improve elderly care – offering a privacy-first alternative to cameras and wearables. The sunset years come with their own set of challenges. Ageing is one of the key risk factors for falls. According to the WHO, older people have the highest risk of death or serious injury arising from a fall and the risk only increases with age. In fact monitoring the elderly during sleep is just as vital as keeping an eye on them while moving. It is the reason why elderly homes, hospitals and now even families employ nursing staff or attendants to monitor the well-being of elderly patients through the night. At IIIT-H, Prof. Aftab Hussain, Centre for VLSI and Embedded System Technologies, is particularly concerned about falls that go unnoticed. According to him, “In many cases, help arrives too late – not because care is unavailable, but because no one knows an incident has occurred.”
Teaching Machines to Adapt: Inside a Drone Lab Where Uncertainty Is the Starting Point
From flood relief to farming and the frontlines, Prof. Spandan Roy is rethinking how machines learn to act in the real world. “Even if you don’t know the system… can you still control it?” It’s not the kind of question that usually opens a talk on robotics. But for Prof. Spandan Roy, it defines everything and sets the context for his work at the Robotics Research Center at IIITH. In theory, engineering is neat. Systems obey equations; forces can be calculated; outcomes predicted. In practice, especially in the world of flying machines, things are far less tidy. A drone in flight isn’t just governed by clean physical laws; it’s constantly negotiating wind, drag, shifting payloads, and environmental disturbances that are difficult, if not impossible, to model precisely. For someone without a traditional mechanical background, as Prof. Roy admits of himself, this gap becomes even more pronounced.
IIIT-H’s Social Tech Incubator & EPAM Launch 4th ESIIP Cohort for Deep-Tech Climate Impact
AIC-IIIT-H Foundation, the social tech incubator of IIIT-H, in partnership with EPAM Systems, has selected 6 high-impact GreenTech startups for its 4th cohort for the Akash EPAM-SIIP. Following a rigorous selection process, 11 applicants out of 130+ national applicants pitched to a distinguished jury, with 6 ventures selected for their potential to advance India’s UN SDG commitments focused on Climate Action (SDG 13). By bridging the gap between academic research and market-ready innovation, the program empowers startups to solve critical environmental challenges in sectors like Green Energy, Circularity and Climate Action. It offers a comprehensive growth platform, including a ₹5 lakh grant, access to IIIT-H labs, faculty and the Smart City Lab Test Bed for validation, along with mentorship and business coaching from EPAM experts and industry veterans to refine models for large-scale social impact.
IIIT-H hosts Roundtable on Quantum Technologies for Life Sciences in association with Frontier Tech Hub, NITI Aayo
IIIT-H convened an industry–academia roundtable and workshop on “Quantum Technologies for Life Sciences” in association with NITI Aayog. Bringing together researchers, industry leaders, startups, and policymakers to explore how quantum computing and sensing to understand the opportunities and use cases for Quantum Computing in life sciences can address complex challenges in healthcare, biology, and drug discovery. The event had brainstorming sessions, invited talks, and panel discussions among experts from academia, industry, and government, with the broader vision of understanding the potential impact of quantum technologies on various life science challenges where quantum technologies could fundamentally reshape research paradigms and enable next-generation innovations.
IIIT-H incubated startup BioReform bags global award for ditching plastic
A global award, a UN case study, presence in 8 Indian metros, 4 countries, 15 million plastic bags saved and speed tracked for foreign government collaboration. What makes the AIC-IIITH incubated startup BioReform, a great newsmaker is that it was also founded by a 21-year-old entrepreneur, with a fisheye lens of the world. BioReform, a rising star on the sustainability landscape, is making your life and mine, more mindfully impactful. The Greeny bag is a fully biodegradable alternative to the bane of modern civilization – the ubiquitous plastic bag. Manufactured from plant-based raw materials like corn starch and biopolymers, it will decompose naturally within months, assures startup founder Mohammed Azhar Mohiuddin, a young engineer from Hyderabad. BioReform came second among 300 startups from 40 countries at the international competition in Saudi Arabia, under the aegis of the Ministry of Haj and Umra.
R&D Showcase 2026
The 25th R&D Showcase at IIIT Hyderabad began on 14 March featuring over 400 research posters, demos and prototypes from 29 centres. The two-day R&D Showcase is the institute’s major annual exhibition where faculty and students present their latest research projects, prototypes and innovations to academia, industry and the public Themed ‘Trust in Technology – Security, Privacy and Transparency. The programme included spotlight sessions by the Centre for Security, Theory and Algorithmic Research (CSTAR) and the Cyber Manthan Centre (CMC), an inaugural keynote by Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, CEO-ANRF, and a panel discussion on “Building Trust in the Indian Cyberspace: Privacy, Security and Transparency in the Era of Emerging Technologies.” Prof Sandeep K Shukla, Director of IIIT-H, said, “It is encouraging to see our researchers engaging with industry, policymakers and the wider public to translate research into meaningful societal impact.”
Indian App Turns Impaired Speech into Clear Speech
Vineet Gandhi of IIIT Hyderabad, leader of the team that developed an app that converts slurred speech into clear speech or uses a camera to analyse lip movements and subtle throat vibrations to generate intelligible speech. The delay is only a few hundred milliseconds, and the developers are now focusing on regional languages. A whisper. A few slurred words. For those who suffer from dysarthria, a motor speech disorder, basic communication is a challenge, indelibly affecting both their professional and personal life. But now a new innovation based on artificial intelligence (AI) and developed in India could be life-changing. Led by associate professor Vineet Gandhi a team has developed a simple app that can help people talk as an audio translation converts the speaker’s voice almost in real-time. The app can either convert slurred speech into clear, natural-sounding speech or use a camera to analyse lip movements and subtle throat vibrations to generate intelligible speech.
ANRF Awards Advanced Grants to 10 IIIT-H researchers
Among the 15,700 proposals submitted nationwide, ten research projects from the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) emerged as winners of the prestigious Advanced Research Grant (ARG) – the Anusandhan National Research Foundation’s (ANRF) flagship funding scheme – an extraordinary showing that underscores the institute’s growing influence in cutting-edge science and technology. The Advanced Research Grant by ANRF, India’s national funding body for research and innovation that has been set up by the Government of India, is designed to support ambitious, investigator-driven research projects led by established researchers working on novel, high-impact ideas. From foundational research to real-world innovation, the selected projects spotlight the depth, diversity, and ambition of IIIT-Hyderabad’s research ecosystem. The selected projects cover areas including quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, communication systems, speech technology and climate research.
Digital Protection Shield
As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and digital finance redraws economic boundaries, the risks beneath our connected world are growing just as fast. At IIIT-H, the Security and Privacy (SyPy) Research Group is working behind the scenes to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, defend emerging technologies, and build the foundations of digital trust. “We live in an online world,” says Prof. Ankit Gangwal, continuing, “Our savings move through digital wallets. Our faces unlock our phones. Our conversations are filtered through machine learning systems that predict what we want before we type it. Every swipe, tap, and transaction depends on layers of invisible code. But what happens when that code is compromised?” Prof. Gangwal’s group, is not just asking exactly that question but working relentlessly to answer it. “To secure the future, we must first understand the vulnerabilities of the present,” he remarks. Security failures rarely announce themselves loudly at first. They hide in edge cases, in overlooked assumptions, in code that “should work.”
Trust, but verify: Rethinking our reliance on AI
In an era where large language models dazzle us with fluency, confident reasoning, and near-human responses, Prof. Manish Shrivastava urges caution by pulling back the curtain on AI’s “illusion of reasoning,” and makes a compelling case for smarter data, smaller models, and a more thoughtful future for AI, especially in the Indian context. Prof. Manish Shrivastava’s research philosophy can be best described with two ‘Rs’: “R for research and R for rabbit holes.” Explaining that there are three types of research, the goal-oriented kind which is focused and socially impactful, the opportunistic kind which jumps into emerging gaps in a field and the exploratory type, driven by intellectual curiosity, Prof. Shrivastava elaborates that most of his work falls into the third category. It’s these rabbit holes that have led him deep into one of today’s most urgent questions: Are large language models (LLMs) actually doing what we think they are? Anybody who is using an large language model (LLM) treats it as an intelligent entity. But for Prof. Shrivastava, it is “facts plus language”.