Each year the AAAI recognizes a group of individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence by appointing them as Fellows. Over the course of the next few months, we'll be talking to some of the 2024 AAAI Fellows. In the first interview in the series, we met Professor Mausam and found out about his research, career path, mentorship, and why it is important to add some creative pursuits to your life. I am professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, in the Computer Science department. I also have a secondary appointment with the Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence.

Generative AI platforms have been the rage since the second half of last year with Microsoft and Google pushing these programs into their existing services. Even the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), on 3 February, said it is "cognizant" of the emergence and proliferation of generative AI and noted that AI can be a "kinetic enabler" for growth in India. However, researchers at institutes underline a host of challenges for generative AI projects in academia, the biggest of which lie in sourcing ample data of Indic languages, the cost of such projects, and the scale of computing power needed. Indian researchers have been working on such projects for more than three years. "In academia, we're using techniques from language models, namely the transformer architecture, for different tasks such as classification of data, answering questions, machine translation and building chatbots," said Tapas Kumar Mishra, assistant professor of computer science engineering at National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela.

New Delhi [India], February 23 (ANI/PNN): KnowDis and IIT Delhi's Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence are collaborating to develop cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence models that can discover potential antibodies for treating various kinds of diseases. The collaboration involves two renowned professors from the School of AI at IIT Delhi, Dr Sayan Ranu, and Dr Anoop Krishnan. The collaboration aims to strengthen the AI capabilities of KnowDis, making it a one-of-a-kind team capable of making crucial advancements in the field of drug design. The confluence of KnowDis and IIT Delhi brings together a multidisciplinary team to accelerate drug discovery with AI. The collaboration will add to the existing collaboration that KnowDis has with Dr Gaurav Goel from the Chemical Engineering Department at IIT Delhi.

As of next year, IIT Delhi will offer a new postgraduate studies in artificial intelligence. Students getting a bachelor's degree in science or engineering will be able to participate in the programme. According to authorities, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi would begin a new postgraduate studies focusing on machine learning after this year. "IIT Delhi's School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI) will launch a new postgraduate advanced machine learning programme. The proposed course titled "M Tech in Machine Intelligence and Data Science (MINDS)" has been accepted by the IIT Delhi Council, the academic body responsible for all important educational matters, according to a senior official at the institution. MTech in MINDS will be the school's main program for students, with classes starting in July 2022. This will be the dept's second degree programme. The institution had previously begun a PhD programme in Artificial Intelligence. "In its initial year, our PhD programme drew a lot of attention.

Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI @ IIT Madras: RBCDSAI has established itself as one of the most productive AI labs in the country now, as measured by publications in top AI conferences. It aims to leverage data science to give insights to make actionable, reliable and impactful decisions for adoption in engineering, finance and healthcare domains. Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence @ IIT Kharagpur: CAI at IIT Kharagpur has been set up in April 2018 in recognition of the increasing importance of the role of Artificial Intelligence. It leverages more than three decades of research and contribution of IIT Kharagpur in fundamental and applied AI. The Centre has been seed-funded by a grant from Capillary Technologies.

NanoSniff has partnered with Vehant Technologies, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning- based physical security, surveillance and traffic monitoring and junction enforcement solutions. Union Education Minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal'Nishank' has launched NanoSniffer, a Microsensor based Explosive Trace Detector (ETD) developed by NanoSniff Technologies, an IIT Bombay incubated startup. NanoSniffer has been marketed by Vehant Technologies, a company that was incubated at IIT Delhi as a startup in 2005. A 100 per cent'Made in India' product in terms of research, development & manufacturing, the core technology of NanoSniffer is protected by patents in the US and Europe. Given the constant threats, which our nation faces due to geo-political realities, explosives and contraband detection has become a norm at high security locations like airports, railways and metro stations, hotels, malls and other public places.

The number of unicorns (those who have a valuation of over $1 billion) is also growing steadily in India. In 2020 alone, 11 startups from India joined the unicorn club, which boasts of Paytm, Ola, Zomato, Cars 24, and 34 others. The above figures are intriguing and contrary to the early fears raised by several industry observers. The Indian startup ecosystem was projected for a steep decline by many in March 2020 due to the Covid-induced bedbound economic environment. Technology interventions and innovative ideas played a pivotal role in resuscitating the growth path.

The Indian Institutes of Technology, or IITs, are 23 premiere higher education universities, with around 16,000 students, as of 2020. These are famous for their exclusivity, history, and quality of education, so it's a big deal that one of them, IIT Delhi, is launching a free online AI course. This is a 12-week course offered from 18th January 2021 to 09th April 2021. Those seeking a certificate take a proctored exam on 25th April 2021. The deadline to enroll is 25th January 2021.

Mausam is an Associate Professor of Computer Science department at IIT Delhi, and an affiliate faculty member at University of Washington, Seattle. His research explores several threads in artificial intelligence, including scaling probabilistic planning algorithms, large-scale information extraction over the Web, and enabling complex computation over crowdsourced platforms. He received his PhD from University of Washington in 2007 and a B.Tech. ArnetMiner, a global citation aggregator, has rated Mausam as the 25th most influential scholar in AI for 2019. He was recently awarded the AAAI Senior Member status for his long-term participation in AAAI and distinction in the field of artificial intelligence.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has established an independent "School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI)" on its campus. The institute is already a leader in the country and Asia for research and educational activity in AI. IIT Delhi is No.1 in India based on the number of high quality publications in the area of AI in the last ten years. The School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI) aims to cement IIT Delhi's leadership position in India and considerably improve its global standing. ScAI will begin its PhD program from the next admission cycle (Jan 2021).