AI Centre of Excellence at IIT Madras to Boost Education

• Google.org invests $8 million to establish four AI Centres of Excellence.
• Centres focus on healthcare, agriculture, education, and sustainable urban AI solutions.
• Funding boosts Indic languages and AI-based health data interoperability.

To bolster India's research ecosystem, Google.org, the philanthropic division of Google, declared an $8 million investment for four AI Centres of Excellence focusing on health, agriculture, education, and sustainable cities.

The centers consist of TANUH at IISc Bangalore, which will concentrate on creating scalable AI solutions for the efficient management of non-communicable diseases; and the Airawat Research Foundation at IIT Kanpur, which will emphasize groundbreaking research on AI to revolutionize urban governance.

The AI Centre of Excellence for Education at IIT Madras aims to create solutions that improve learning and teaching results, whereas ANNAM.AI at IIT Ropar will concentrate on building data-driven solutions for agriculture and supporting farmers' welfare.

Furthermore, Google revealed a $2 million initial donation to create the new Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay. The center, established in honor of Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, a leader in Indic language technologies and a Visiting Researcher at Google DeepMind, will seek to guarantee that international AI developments benefit India’s linguistic variety.

"India is approaching artificial intelligence as a strategic national capability, not as a short-term technology trend. The four AI Centres of Excellence have been conceived as a coordinated national research mission, advancing foundational research, responsible AI, and applied solutions that serve public purpose, and contributing to our larger aspiration of Viksit Bharat 2047," said Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Education.

"Building a globally competitive AI ecosystem requires not only public investment, but also strong institutional leadership and long-term partnerships with industry. This effort is supported by Google and Google.org through their $8 million contribution to the AI Centres of Excellence and a $2 million founding contribution to the Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay," he added.

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Initially, Ajna Lens will collaborate with specialists from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to develop models that will cater to India-specific scenarios in Dermatology and OPD Triaging. The models produced will enhance India's Digital Public Infrastructure, and their results will be available to the ecosystem.

Google is collaborating with India's National Health Authority (NHA) to utilize its sophisticated AI to transform millions of scattered, unstructured medical records, including physicians' clinical and progress notes, into the global, machine-readable FHIR standard.

"From foundational research to ecosystem deployment to scaled impact, our full-stack approach is equipping the country to lead a global AI-powered future, with innovations from India's labs benefiting billions across the world," said Dr Manish Gupta, Senior Research Director, Google DeepMind.