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AI4ICPS of IIT Kharagpur launches certification course on Artificial Intelligence with TCS iON

Press Conference on launch of HAAI

AI for Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (AI4ICPS), a national AI Hub, established by IIT Kharagpur under the aegis of DST, Government of India, on the occasion of third anniversary of National Educational Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), announces the launch of its latest and highly anticipated program, “Hands-on AI for the real-world applications (HAAI).” The course was launched by Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur in the august presence of Mr. Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON, along with Prof. Amit Patra, Deputy Director, Prof. Pabitra Mitra, Project Director, AI4ICPS; Captain Amit Jain (Retd.), Registrar; Mr. Bhat Dittakavi, CEO, AI4ICPS Technology Innovation Hub of IIT Kharagpur; Mr. Manivannan Ranganathan, Business Head, TCS iON and senior officials of TCS. This certification program is set to democratize education in AI technologies for skill development of youth and professionals with the goal to massively educate 1,00,000 lakh people as part of nation building.

Prof. V K Tewari, Director , IIT Kharagpur with Mr. Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON

Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur stated, “Skill Development of the students and young professionals as a part of nation building has been one of the major aspects of NEP 2020. The Hands-on AI certification course offered by AI4ICPS of IIT Kharagpur will prepare the participants industry readiness and the opportunity to interact with TCS and other industry subject matter experts which will amalgamate a potential career path for the students and the professionals in accordance with AI application. The vision towards this program is to implement NEP 2020 for AI Education to improve employability and encourage innovation. The TCS team is on board with us to offer infrastructure competences and other technical support. The course targets one lakh students in cohort (phases) with interactive sessions. Through this course the participants would know how he/she can utilize this pedagogy for implementations in his job profile. Following the success of the course, we can take this forward to launch a diploma course for 10-12 months or a degree course which will be beneficial for the students and the working professional. This will also be an opportunity for the people to experience the industrial outline of the knowledge base, i.e. IIT Kharagpur.

Launching of HAAI

Led by the esteemed Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. V K Tewari, Hands-on AI for the real-world applications (HAAI) has been meticulously designed to not only meet the demands of the rapidly evolving Al industry but also structured to implement the NEP 2020 recommendations such as education for all, concepts based and hands-on interdisciplinary learning, upskilling for employability and digital technology enhanced virtual classrooms. With the emphasis on hands-on learning and interdisciplinary approaches, this transformative program offers a unique blend of theoretical foundations and hands-on practical learning, heavily biased towards later.

AI4ICPS has brought in TCS iON, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) focused on educational institutions and examination boards, as a platform and outreach partner for this certification program. As a partner, TCS iON will provide LMS platform services and massive outreach to institutions of India and another target audience.

TCS iON Delegation

Mr. Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON remarked, “At TCS iON, we have made significant and continued investments in developing learning and assessment solutions that can help in upskilling India’s youth at scale. We are bringing an ecosystem covering multiple players with pedigreed academic institutions and leading industry players to create impactful programs which add industry context to academic learning. We are very happy to join hands with AI4ICPS unit of IIT Kharagpur in taking the course on “AI for Real World Applications” to the market jointly. A large number of people wants to learn from IIT Kharagpur. Multiple cohorts will be conducted starting with the 3 months online course, once we reach a maximum number through registration. Professionals, students, corporates can join this course which will in turn create new opportunities, better jobs with a deep dive into a multiple structure of real world AI applications. This is just the beginning, we want to learn more from each other.”

Interaction with Media Professionals

This 3-month weekends-only online program are offered by the faculty of IIT Kharagpur from Computer Science, Electronics, Electrical and Math departments and TCS scientists and the real-world applications are offered by industry experts along with the research scholars of IIT Kharagpur with hands-on practical learning.

Some of the key highlights of the program include 100 hours of overall experiential learning, industry preparedness from AI4ICPS hub, modular quizzes, tips and tricks and assignments, discussion rooms, some real-world datasets, live doubt-clearing by the experts, certificate of merit for top 1%, opportunity to interact with industry professionals and resume prep guidance by AI4ICPS.

Course name: Hands-on AI for the real-world applications

Duration: 47 contact hours and total 100 hours of experiential learning

Start Date: 2nd September 2023

End Date: 2nd December 2023

Eligibility: Freshers, individuals pursuing UG/PG degree, who aspire for a career in the field of AI, working professionals looking for a career transition as AI/ML engineer, individuals with basic programming knowledge looking to build their careers in IT.

Prospective participants can register for this certification program through AI4ICPS official website www.ai4icps.in or TCS iON website https://learning.tcsionhub.in/hub/iit-kgp-certificate-program/hands-on-approach-to-ai/

Media Coverage:

Indian AI	Hindustan Times	India Today
Economic Times (Telugu)	News 18 (Malyalam)	The Print
Deccan Herald	Aaj Kal	Ei Samay
ANM News English	Latestly	Careers 360
Amader Bharat	STV	KGP News
Fagen Wasanni Technologies	Daily New Post	ANM News Hindi

ABP (Print) Dainik Bhaskar Dainik Jagran

Contact Person : Bhatt Dittakavi, CEO, AI4ICPS, IIT Kharagpur
Email : ceo@ai4icps.in

Edited By : Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

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In one of the most impressive student events organized at IIT Kharagpur, teachers, students, industry experts came together to talk Artificial Intelligence.

Spelled up.AI and pronounced “Upay” or ‘solution’ in Hindi, the up.AI summit from October 5-7 tried to delve into the problems – illiteracy, hunger, disease, natural disasters – and how AI can be used to solve them. Up.AI was organized by the Computer Science and Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur and its newly established Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence.

The meet not only focused on the thematic areas of AI, but also its practical applications. Speakers, – teachers, industry heads, entrepreneurs and researchers – gave demonstrations of how AI was being used in their respective fields – be it retail, banking, healthcare, transport or education. Ms Swapna Agarwal, part of the Research and Innovation team of TCS in Kolkata, for example introduced the audience to her work in computer vision with specific emphasis on 3D point-cloud registration. A team associated with a top bank showed how AI was being used in risk analysis and assessing the credibility of start-ups. Mr Malaikannan Sankarasubbu, Vice-President, AI Research @Saama Technologies, explained how AI was being used in clinical trials, especially those of medicines. Mr Shailesh Kumar, Chief Data Scientist, Jio CoE in AI, showed how AI can revolutionize education (The most unique of the applications that Mr Kumar described was how AI could be used to teach students the art of thinking).

Prof. Plaban Kumar Bhowmick, Assistant Professor, Centre for Educational Technology explained how AI was being used extensively by IIT Kharagpur in the National Digital Library. Prof. Mrigank Sharad, Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering of IIT Kharagpur, and Director and CPO of AgNext, an IIT KGP startup, showed how AI is being used in crop-screening and in data-driven precision farming. Mr Rupak Kumar Thakur, Deep Learning Engineer at AgricX Lab, explained how his lab is using deep learning based computer vision algorithms to do quality assessment and standardization of agricultural produce with a focus on potato.

The audience at the up.AI summit not only included senior students at IIT Kharagpur who are already working on AI but also students from the first and second year. The message that went out to them from the speakers was simple. One, that India stands to benefit from AI in a big way. Professor Pallab Dasgupta of the Computer Science and Engineering Department and Dean, Sponsored Research and Consultancy, pointed out that just like IT had proved to be one of the wealth creators for India, AI would be equally beneficial for India, given that the country already had a lot going for it by way of digital penetration, its huge talent pool, and its proven ability to scale up new technology.

The other message that went out to the young audience was that instead of exploiting the hype around AI, they had to innovate and “create”. Mr Subrat Panda, Head of AI and Data Sciences at Capillary Technologies, clearly made that point during his virtual class from Bengaluru. Dr. Suryanil Ghosh, Chairman, TotalStart Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Developers, reminded students that they need to engage in interdisciplinary research since “The AI revolution in India will be driven by interdisciplinary collaboration in research.”

The point was reiterated during the panel discussion, which also highlighted several other problem areas. The panel included faculty, students as well as experts like Suddha Sattwa Kundu, VP Head, Retail Risk Loss Forecasting, Collections & Fraud Prevention Strategy of HSBC Technology and Services, and Mr Kumar of Jio Center in AI. It was pointed out that the toughest challenge in Machine Learning is data acquisition, and that students tended to prefer projects for which data is available. The other point highlighted was the lack of gender diversity in the community working on ML. It was suggested that student groups like ‘Lean In Tech’ could encourage girls interested in ML/AI to come forward in this arena.

IIT Kharagpur has been using AI extensively for the past few years. A recent survey by SRIC showed as many as 83 of its Faculty use AI in their work. The enthusiasm surrounding AI was palpable in the enormous crowd of close to a thousand students who congregated at the boot camp on October 5, prior to the beginning of the summit . The bootcamp introduced attendant students to theory, implementation and deployment of AI-powered algorithms. The event also featured a Deep Learning Quiz. It was followed by a contest named J.A.R.V.I.S. Chronicles that saw overwhelming participation.

The up.AI summit has led to a larger competition termed up.AI Challenge. Till October 21, students will have time to form teams and present proposals for projects dealing with AI. Under the mentorship of IIT Kharagpur professors, 10 select projects will be incubated during the winter vacation and in a competition to be held in January 2019, the best among them will be awarded. As Professor Sudeshna Sarkar, head CoE for AI, said, “The idea was to have some AI related activity going on at IIT Kharagpur. There is a lot of enthusiasm among the students and events like the up.AI meet will not only encourage students but also inform, shape up and channelize creativity. All this is great for the newly-established CoE for AI.”

Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur, said, “The talent and interest in AI in IIT KGP, and the support from others is incredible. We need to make it happen more and more. Thanks to Anirban Santara and Team up.AI for organizing the event at IIT KGP. Let’s take this movement forward.”

Tag: industry experts

Say HAAI for AI – Hands-on Artificial Intelligence for the real-world applications

Eat, pray, love Artificial Intelligence

In one of the most impressive student events organized at IIT Kharagpur, teachers, students, industry experts came together to talk Artificial Intelligence.