DST plans Innovation Hub at IIIT-Hyderabad

Hyderabad: International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H) has been selected by National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems to set up a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) on data-driven technologies with a funding of Rs 110 crore from Department of Science and Technology (DST). IIIT-H was the only institution outside of the IITs and IISc in the initial list of 17 selected TIHs. The hub will play a pivotal role in developing and promoting data-driven technologies and artificial intelligence/ machine learning across the country.

TIH-Data, a Section-8 company, will be a single point source for all data-driven technologies on mobility, healthcare, systems, buildings, and India-specific problems. It will support projects in the domain areas of TIH to academic, R&D institutions and industry and other funding agencies, participate in international projects, support student start-ups and support incubatees as well as initiate international collaborative projects.

Even as the hub setup is still underway, a special initiative around COVID-19 has already started at the institute. As part of the RAKSHAK effort by DST, a project to curate and compile data sets that can be used to address COVID-19 related solutions around diagnostics and treatment protocols have commenced.

Commenting on TIH-DATA, Prof P J Narayanan said, "This is a great achievement for the institute to be selected as a TIH. We will focus on creating and curating diverse datasets under the Data Foundation being set up under the Hub. Data and its fair, transparent, and open access are critical to the development of ML-based solutions. Translational research will be a particular focus of our Hub. Since IIITH has the largest AI research group in the country, we are looking forward to taking our research from lab to land and making significant contributions to data driven technologies."