Kohli Center on Intelligent Systems

Dr Girish Varma

Simplicity in Complexity: How Prof. Girish Varma keeps it real

Dr. Girish Varma, an Assistant Professor at IIIT Hyderabad’s CSTAR works in the domain of Complexity Theory, Combinatorics, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. The Millenial academic looks back at the early carefree days that saw the advent of computers and how it shaped his world view and career.

Dr. Harikumar Kandath

Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is what Harikumar Kandath regards as his bread, butter and jam. He explains

Harikumar Kandath’s Ikigai and passion lie in Aerial robotics, micro UAVs and problems related to flight dynamics. These include multirotors, fixed-wing UAVs and flapping wing ones. How does the drone navigate when flying close to buildings, confined spaces or in the presence of external disturbances and parametric uncertainties? The assistant professor at IIITH’s Robotics Research Center and his team also study the control and coordination of multi robot systems, reinforcement learning, robust control and state estimation, and evolving controllers

Dr. Chiranjeevi Yarra

IIITH Language forensic Sherlock – Why Chiranjeevi Yarra loves his English accents

Chiranjeevi Yarra’s research in Spoken English and Indian language forensics and informatics could help millions in Rural India to speak English better, by understanding phonemes and accents in their local language and dialect, for a more productive ML-based user experience.

Dr Sujit Gujjar

How Running Marathons and Atomic Habits Fuels Sujit Gujar’s Passion for Ethical AI

Ethical AI, fitness training and chai pe charcha with research students is Sujit Gujar’s Ikigai, that which puts a spring in his step and sparks his joy. The Associate Professor and CA Technologies Faculty Chair at IIIT Hyderabad uses Game Theory, Mechanism Design, Machine Learning and Blockchain to build next generation AI systems.

Dr. Parameswari Krishnamurthy

From English Literature to Computational Linguistics – What drives Dr. Parameswari Krishnamurthy?”

Alexa, how do I say, ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ in Tamil?” Computational Linguist Prof. Parameswari Krishnamurthy’s research at the IIITH-Language Technology Research Centre is developing a Tamil-Telugu machine translation app and is using Natural Language Processing and areas of linguistic divergence and convergence to build a contrastive grammar and syntactic treebank corpus.

Dr. Makarand Tapaswi

From the Big Bang Theory to the Hogwarts of Computer Vision – Understanding Makarand Tapaswi’s world

Makarand Tapaswi is a story-teller. A youthful confluence of industry and academia, he brings the best of industry practice as Senior ML Scientist at Wadhwani AI to his role as Assistant Professor at IIIT Hyderabad’s CVIT, working on AI projects in video and Language understanding.

Bhaktee Dongaonkar

Bhaktee Dongaonkar

Prof. Bhaktee Dongaonkar’s stories are riveting. Her research looks at the effects of stress on memory and learning, Depression and Ageing. The cognitive scientist is an interesting amalgam of a psychologist with a foundation in electronics engineering.

Dr. Priyanka Srivastava

Priyanka Srivastava

Dr. Priyanka Srivastava’s current work at IIIT Hyderabad is breaking the glass ceiling in gender typecasting and depression. An early interest in human behaviour led her to study cognitive mechanisms, using virtual reality to screen and diagnose mental health issues in youth, linguistic geographies, and vulnerable demographics.

Dr. Avinash Sharma

Exploring the Unfolding Metaverse with Avinash Sharma

IIIT Hyderabad Prof. Avinash Sharma’s work in the 3D computer vision with focus on digital humans has applications in emerging platforms like the Metaverse platform. We look at building blocks, the Vedantic and other philosophies that piques his creative brain and shapes his Reality!

Dr. Charu Sharma

Why is IIITH’s young professor running in geometric circles?

At 30, Dr. Charu Sharma is the youngest faculty at IIIT Hyderabad’s Machine Learning Lab and frequently gets mistaken for a student. We investigate the motivational journey of the self-confessed average pupil whose academic stops at IIT and IIITH set her apart from the herd.

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy

What does a hardcore anthropologist bring to a technological university?

An ‘accidental anthropologist’ gained international visibility for her famous Facebook research on peri-urban youth, VR dating and the Ameerpet IT hub, among other interesting studies. Read on for more insights into Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy’s cutting-edge work at the intersection of AI, HCI and Human Sciences at IIITH’s Kohli Centre.

Dr. Sudipta Banerjee

Biometric Forensics – Through the eyes of a Cyber-Sleuth

Prof. Sudipta Banerjee’s work in the edgy domain of biometrics, digital image forensics, morphing and cyber security is grabbing a lot of eyeballs. CVIT recently bagged an ambitious project with MEITY. She spoke to us about that and other interesting work in biometric security.

Dr. Aditi Mukherjee

Aditi Mukherjee – How a Linguist is bringing a new dimension to IT

Prof. Aditi Mukherjee, a sociolinguist, is teaching Linguistics to IT students about how language works. After a long career in pure humanities, she has reinvented herself and now takes a course in computational linguistics at IIITH’s LTRC lab. Here’s the story.

Dr. Vikram Pudi

Why is Vikram Pudi Obsessed with Data Repositories?

Prof. Vikram Pudi’s expertise lies in data science and data mining. What pings his passion is building Metadata Repositories. He believes that curating a purpose-built segmentation of data saves time and energy. We spoke to the data scientist about his role at IIITH’s Center for Data science and Analytics.

Dr. Anil Kumar Vuppala

A Figure of Speech

IIITH’s Language Technologies Research Center (LTRC) has been exploring exciting possibilities in the emergent multi-lingual speech recognition domain. We caught up with Prof. Anil Kumar Vuppala, a central figure in speech technology to hear it

Prof Bapi Raju

Matters of the Mind and Brain

This month’s ‘Know Your Professor’ column sees us in conversation with Prof. Bapi Raju from the Cognitive Science lab. He talks of his incidental foray into Computational Neuroscience and Neuroimaging while giving a sneak peek into his current research areas. Read On.

Prof Dipti Misra Sharma

The Grande Dame of IIIT Hyderabad

This month’s ‘Know Your Professor’ column sees us in conversation with Prof. Bapi Raju from the Cognitive Science lab. He talks of his incidental foray into Computational Neuroscience and Neuroimaging while giving a sneak peek into his current research areas. Read On.

Dr. Kavita Vemuri

The Cry Of Carpe Diem

Dr. Kavita Vemuri has many tales to tell. But she would rather just chat about them than see herself in a formal feature. Not many know that she first arrived on IIITH campus to help set up the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and later went on to spearhead the Cognitive Sciences research centre. Find out more about the professor who not only walks the talk but whose stern disciplinary demeanour belies the fuzz inside.

Dr. Radhika Mamidi

Of Documenting The Daily And Other Stories

photographs of little known natural wonders on campus often prompt other faculty and students to take another dekko of the same beaten path. With ‘inclusion’ being her mantra, the institute has not only shed its conservative image by engaging in conversations with the queer community, but also encouraged camaraderie and participation from all newbies across academic programmes. Read on to learn more about this closet chef and expert in Computational Linguistics.

Dr. Anoop Namboodiri

An Academic with a Dream view

A IIITH-CIE incubated start-up recently bagged a coveted Design Award at the Vision Systems 2021 Innovation Awards for its patented omnidirectional 3D Vision Systems. Prof. Anoop Namboodiri, head of IIITH’s Biometrics Lab and CSO of DreamVu explained how they pulled

Dr. Vinoo Alluri

Meet the Professor Who Plays it by Ear

What sparks the joy when you listen to music? This and other mysteries are being investigated by Prof. Vinoo Alluri at IIITH’s Cognitive Science Lab, blurring the lines between applied sciences and humanities in the field of music cognition.