IIIT-Hyderabad to celebrate FC Kohli Day on Friday

Hyderabad: The Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems (KCIS) at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) will be celebrating FC Kohli's birth anniversary on March 19 with a special programme on his life through research and innovation.

Faqir Chand Kohli is referred to as the "Father of the Indian IT Industry", for his contributions to the establishment and growth of the Indian Information Technology. He was founder and CEO of TCS. The government honoured him with Padma Bhushan. His contribution to the Indian IT Industry is highly significant.

This annual event, which is being launched this year, will include reminiscing on FC Kohli by S Ramadorai, former CEO and vice-chairman, TCS, Prof Raj Reddy, from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as others from TATA and IIIT-H community.

The online event will also include an interactive session with Viswanathan Anand, chess Grandmaster and former world chess champion on AI in Chess: A World Champion's Perspective; a distinguished lecture by Prof Devi Parikh, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech, Facebook AI Research; live interactive research demos by IIIT-H students and multiple faculty-alumni advisee interactions.

Commenting on the established of an annual F C Kohli Day at IIIT-H, Prof P J Narayanan, director, IIIT- said, "the institute has worked closely with TCS since the early 2000s that led to the establishment of the Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems (KCIS) in 2015 with an endowment from TCS. It is, without doubt, a rare and unparalleled honour to the institute to have an effort named for a colossus like Kohli. KCIS has now developed into one of the country's largest AI research centres. Through the establishment of an annual F C Kohli Day we hope to celebrate his vision and carry his work forward".