NVIDIA Research Centre at IIT Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) collaborated with NVIDIA, a multinational technology company, to establish India's first 'NVIDIA AI Technology Centre' (NVAITC) to accelerate research on Artificial Intelligence and its commercial adoption.

Addressing at an event on Thursday marking the commencement of the operation of the new centre, IITH Director Prof BS Murthy, highlighting the benefits of the state-of-the-art facility, said the collaboration between the IIT Hyderabad and NVIDIA will focus on advancing AI research in the areas of Agriculture and Smart Cities, besides language understanding.

The projects that would be taken up include increasing crop yield using AI algorithms and applying AI-based solutions to support safer transportation systems and better ways of managing traffic, among others, he said. It may be mentioned here that the IITH already houses two NVIDIA DGX-1TM systems and an NVIDIA DGX-2TM system, dedicated to research being undertaken at the institute.

The NVAITC will accelerate research for the 220 faculty at IITH, which is already among India's foremost research institutions in just over a decade into its inception, he said.

Adding further, "This combination of NVIDIA's leading-edge technology for AI compute and some of the finest minds in the country from IITH will bring synergy to help find solutions to uniquely Indian challenges, be it enhancing crop yield or safer cities. This will build on the strong AI capabilities IITH has built, including the country's first B Tech in AI program."

On the collaboration, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director for NVIDIA South Asia, said, "NVIDIA is powering the AI revolution across research facilities everywhere. Our collaboration with IITH will accelerate AI research and help create innovative solutions to real-world challenges."

The NVAITC also represents another step in NVIDIA's collaborations in Telangana. The State government recently announced 2020 as the 'Year of AI' intending to establish Hyderabad among the top 25 global AI innovation hubs. NVIDIA is already a partner to the government of Telangana in this endeavour.

The IITH was the first in India and likely a third institution globally in offering a full-fledged B Tech program in Artificial Intelligence from the academic year 2019-20. It is also the third institute globally to offer a full-fledged B Tech program in Artificial Intelligence in the Academic Year 2019-20.