India’s First IIIT — In Hyderabad — Is 25 Years Old, And Is Recognised Globally As The Nation’s Top Institute For AI Research

On 2 September 1998, at the premises of what was once the office of the district collectorate, in Hyderabad, the inaugural batch of students of India’s first Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), began their studies.

The chief minister of what was then Andhra Pradesh, was N Chandrababu Naidu — who a year earlier had famously journeyed to Microsoft’s US headquarters in Redmond, Washington state, cornered Bill Gates to show him a short presentation and convinced him to set up the software giant’s first India Development Centre in Hyderabad.

So, the state government’s support was assured: state IT secretary Ajay Sawhney, was designated Special Officer for IIIT Hyderabad, with the task of shaping the conceptual model.

For what was to be the first of 20 such public-private partnerships, the National Association of Software and Service Companies or NASSCOM joined the Andhra state as the two promoters of IIIT-Hyderabad.

A huge plus was that son-of-the-soil and globally recognised robotics guru and founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University( USA) — Dr Raj Reddy — agreed to come onboard as Chairman of the Governing Council. 

“It was in the air. Silicon Valley was happening,” recalls Dr Reddy, “It was clear from the beginning that they were going to not just teach students but also going to do research.”

Even today, IIIT-H remains that very rare institute where undergraduates  can start on a research programme.

In 2001, all the IIITs were renamed International Institutes of Information Technology. IIIT-H had by then, become a deemed university.

“The goal was to set up a research-oriented institution that can start new companies to start the Silicon Valley in Hyderabad,” recalls Professor Rajeev Sangal, who helped design the syllabus of the new institute.

He was to head IIIT-H as its longest serving director from 2002 to 2013 — during which time he established the institute as one of India’s leading centres for Indic studies and Indian language computing, helmed by his own work in Computational Paninian grammar.

Today Professor Sangal is back at IIIT-H to continue his research having served as Director IIT-BHU for a few years.

Last week IIIT-H celebrated its 25^th birthday — with many of its founding stalwarts gathering together again.

Having served as chairman for all the 25 years and mentored hundreds of students — in the process creating a nationally recognised Robotics Research Lab at IIIT-H — Dr Raj Reddy handed over the baton to a new chairman: governing council member Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala and longtime IIT-Madras faculty member renowned for his work in affordable rural communication.

Himself, a veteran teacher at IIIT-H, Professor P J Narayanan, who  completes 10 years as director (a search is on for his successor) today presides over a sprawling 66 acre of the institute in Hyderabad’s  Gachibowli area, that has become a concentration of technology companies. 

The institute has grown to include 22 research centres, five research translation centres and one of the country’s largest academic incubators.

From 50 students in that first batch, the student count has grown to 2,000 — spread across undergraduate, graduate, masters and PhD. The faculty is now 105. 

TCS Funds The Kohli Centre

In 2015, IT bellwether TCS funded the Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems at IIIT-H, in honour of its first CEO and the Bhishma Pitamaha of the Indian IT industry Dr F C Kohli. (Kohli then a sprightly 91, was on hand for the foundation laying. He passed away in 2020).

The institute is also home to IHub-Data under a programme by the department of science and technology, government of India, the Raj Reddy Centre for Technology and Society, the INAI Centre for Applied AI, jointly by IIIT, Intel and the Telangana government, the Blockchain Centre by Ripple and Smart City Living Labs by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The latest such centre that was announced June this year, is the Goldman Sachs Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, to drive innovation in financial services.

The range of technologies addressed at IIIT-H today is wide: Visual information technologies, human language technologies, data engineering, VLSI and embedded systems, computer architecture, wireless communications, algorithms and information security, robotics, building science, earthquake engineering, cognitive science, computational natural sciences and bioinformatics, education technologies, power systems, IT in agriculture and e-governance.

Tops In AI Research

But underpinning  most of these technologies in recent years has been the institute’s expertise and leveraging of artificial intelligence (AI). 

This has translated in to global recognition by neutral evaluating agencies like AIRankings.org which has consistently ranked IIIT-H as the number one institute in India, based largely on the number of publications of the institution at top AI venues in core AI area.

In this ranking the Hyderabad IIIT is ahead of the “original” IITs at Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras, as well as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru.

And in a ranking of top computer science institutes of the world by CSRankings.org, IIIT-H has been consistently ranked number 7 behind these same six IITs and IISc.

Eclectic Mix Of Projects

An eclectic mix of projects undertaken ensures that the institute harnesses cutting edge technologies, while addressing earthy societal needs: 

• The iRASTE road safety project in Nagpur and Telangana aims to improve road safety with the predictive power of AI. For the first time, AI is expected to be a force multiplier to transform road safety engineering.  Predictive insights generated via AI could prevent accidents even before they happen.

• When a new application signs up for Aadhaar, the computer that captures the person’s biometrics — 10 finger scans — has to do a live check with over a billion previous scans to ensure it has not been scanned earlier. This is no trivial task and is called de-duplication. IIIT-H developed the matching engine for the Unique Identification Authority of India.

• IIIT-H is the lead agency in speech-to-speech translation for Bhashini, a Ministry of Electronics and IT programme which aims to enable all Indians easy access to the Internet and digital services in their own language, and increase the Indian language content in India.

• The live annotation of player bios and details in the televised coverage of cricket by Star Sports? IIIT-H developed the technology.

Its commitment to AI extends to regular outreaches to media and other professional groups where faculty from IIIT-H help to demystify AI.

Said Raj Reddy at the 25^th anniversary media meet last week:

“I am immensely proud to look back on the transformative journey we took at IIIT Hyderabad. It was clear from the start that they would not only teach students but also conduct research. We envisioned a research-oriented institution that imparts technical knowledge and fosters innovation, creativity, and a deep understanding of the ever-changing tech landscape. Our dedication has been to cutting-edge technological advances which are the driving force behind our success.” 

A deserved accolade for IIIT-H that has cherished its independent character and built the first of what are today 26 IIITs, into an institution that carved out its own unique niche in engineering education in India — and made its name on global platforms for its contribution to AI.