IIITH researchers work on unlearning AI biases
As part of the Techforward Research Seminar series, Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru briefly touches upon the pitfalls of LLMs and the ways in which they can be made to unlearn or forget content. In today’s world we rely on technology to accelerate response times to our tasks or queries, to gather accurate information and assist us efficiently. Let’s take the example of 3 everyday technological tools that almost everyone lives with – Google Translate, ChatGPT and WhatsApp. Now, let’s look at some of their imperfections. For instance, a test – that anyone can conduct – across these 3 tools reveals the gender biases that are present. In Google Translate, the prompt for “My friend is a doctor” will translate it to “Mera friend ek doctor hai” while “My friend is a nurse” translates it to “Meri friend ek doctor hai”.
AlphaGrep Partners with IIITH to create ‘AlphaGrep Quantitative Research Lab’
AlphaGrep announced a strategic academic collaboration with IIITH’s Precog group of researchers who study, analyse, and build various aspects of AI systems. Spanning several areas ranging from Applied ML, Responsible and Safe AI, NLP, and Social Network Analysis, Precog develops solutions that contribute to the greater good of society. As part of this collaboration, AlphaGrep has committed ₹3.5 crores to support groundbreaking research, skill-building, and real-world applications of AI/ML in quantitative finance. The initiative spearheaded by Prof. P Kumaraguru (PK), Mr. M Mutreja, and Mr, H Mandalia, will facilitate faculty and student driven research, fostering technical advancements and strengthening the bridge between academia and industry.
Social Internship Turned Into an Enduring Commitment
Here’s an inspiring one from IIITH alumni Chandan Shrivastava and Nikhil Agrawal’s pages. It was meant to be a routine 2-month-long internship at Eklavya, a non-profit based out of Madhya Pradesh. As part of the initial field study to lay out the ground work, Chandan and Nikhil, who were then final year BTech students of Computer Science, hit the ground running by first getting to know the organisation itself, the ‘why’ behind it, and the children being impacted by it. “We are all aware of a section of society that lacks basic rights like an access to education, but we typically don’t pay much attention. In the hinterlands of Madhya Pradesh, we experienced up close what it’s like to be enthusiastic about going to school and learning but being unable to do so,” narrates Chandan.
Generative AI tools for Coding – Why getting all ducks in a row is critical
Recently a roundtable hosted by IIITH on Generative AI tools for the initial phase of the software development life cycle, saw the meeting of industry leaders, technologists, innovators and research minds. What emerged was a white paper, that catalyzed insights into actionable strategies, for organizations to harness the full potential of Generative AI. Gen AI tools continue to charm, excite and induce cold fear. Post pandemic, when ChatGPT lowered the boom on an unsuspecting world, it was a veritable IT Gold Rush, with a global scramble for a piece of the action. In the digital world, Gen AI tools have become transformative assets in software development lifecycle, enabling accelerated coding, improved collaboration among developers, and innovative problem solving.
IIITH and swecha.org organizes AI Hackday, a mega hackathon with 2000 students building AI for public good
AI Hackday, a mega AI hackathon, was conducted on 25th Jan 2025 as the first round towards kickstarting a series to build people-centric AI development. This is organised by viswam.ai, a center setup at IIITH by IIITH and swecha.org. The AI Hackathon is a 3-stage series fostering innovation and creativity, culminating in AI Days 2025′ Spark Camp, where 100 production-ready AI applications are developed to address India’s unique challenges. Inaugurating the hackathon, Bhavesh Mishra, IAS, highlighted the need to leverage the AI revolution early, citing the success of non-Western models like DeepSeek LLM, and emphasised on how India can also build its own context-driven AI models.
NIMS Hyderabad and IIITH create pathology datasets for cancer & kidney research
IIIT Hyderabad, in collaboration with Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), has released digitised datasets of histopathological images focused on brain cancer and kidney disease (lupus nephritis). The effort, dubbed India Pathology Dataset (IPD) project, a collaborative initiative involving academia, hospitals, industry, and govt, aims to digitise tissue biopsy slides. It also seeks to prevent damage to physical slides, improve clinical decision-making, accelerate diagnosis and enable AI-driven research. Supported by the Technological Innovation Hub for Data Banks, Data Services, and Data Analytics (TiH-Data), IIIT Hyderabad installed a whole slide digital scanner at NIMS.
Viswam.ai – launched by IIITH and Swecha to create AI solutions for Global South
In a groundbreaking initiative, the open source activists association Swecha and IIITH have joined forces to launch viswam.ai, a Centre of Excellence dedicated to developing AI solutions tailored to the unique needs of the Global South. Kiran Chandra, Centre Head of Viswam.ai, and Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, IIITH, this ambitious project seeks to “democratise access to AI” by “leveraging community resources and expertise”. “The driving force behind viswam.ai is a belief that current AI models, often developed by large corporations in the Global North, are ill-suited to address the challenges faced by the Global South,” – Y Kiran Chandra.
IIITH Professor explores challenges and opportunities in emerging software architectures
Prof. Raghu Reddy lists out the current challenges in designing software architecture, talks about IIIT Hyderabad’s Software Engineering and Research Centre (SERC) current focus and gives a sneak peek into the future. To better understand the importance of software architecture, let’s first look at its evolution which spans across five ages. As per an article published in IEEE software, in the pre-1980s, the focus was primarily on monolithic systems. During the 1980s and 1990s, we began to explore distributed monolithic systems that offered multiple architectural views for different types of stakeholders.
TCS Grants Research Projects for FC Kohli Center
In the wake of establishing and funding research projects, TCS Established the FC Kohli Center at IIITH. In 2015, TCS established the FC Kohli Center on Intelligent Systems at IIITH as a platform to strengthen existing research and facilitate new activities in IT-related fields. To support impactful and long-term research, an endowment was created to fund ambitious projects. The Kohli Challenge Proposal (KCP) Scheme was introduced to identify and support deserving projects. The selection process involved multiple rounds of evaluation by internal and external reviewers, assessing criteria such as innovation, social impact, applied AI, spin-off potential, and system complexity.
IIITH Student wins first prize in Naval Hackathon
An algorithm developed by a third-year engineering student from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) to detect flying objects —helicopters, aeroplanes, drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and birds — faster and more robustly, could soon be used by the Navy. The solution was developed by Rishabh Bhattacharya at a nationwide competition organised by the Navy to address real-world operational challenges with innovative technological solutions. He won a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh. Speaking to Times of India (TOI), on Thursday, Rishabh said the Navy asked him to conduct further research so that the solution can be integrated into their functioning.