I joined IIITH on August 4 as a Professor and took over as the Director just last week. Over the past three weeks, I have been engaging closely with faculty, research centers, and labs, and while I am still in the process of gaining a complete perspective, certain strengths are already evident.

Interdisciplinarity is deeply embedded in IIITH’s DNA, thanks to its unique structure of research centers rather than traditional departments. These span Computational Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Robotics, Computer Vision, Language Technologies, and Quantum Sciences, creating a natural environment for cross-center collaboration. 

For instance, quantum sciences may draw on natural sciences, while biomedical research integrates biosciences, sensor design, machine learning, and even psychology. Similarly, cybersecurity spans from networking and operating systems to economics, sociology, and behavioral sciences.

What stands out is the institute’s strong linkage with real-world problems, whether through the Smart City Living Lab, transportation datasets, robotics for agriculture, or virtual labs in education. The combination of cutting-edge platforms, such as cloud computing and Kubernetes, with domain expertise across sciences and engineering makes IIITH both a research-driven and socially conscious institution.

This model of an educational mission, anchored in research excellence and interdisciplinarity, sets IIITH apart from other institutes I have been part of, shaping graduates who are not only innovative and creative but also deeply mindful of the societal applications of their knowledge.

Over the last few months, we have gained a clearer understanding of the importance of self-reliance in technology, science, and workforce development, particularly as a country of 1.4 billion, through the lens of current geopolitics. 

Until a few years ago, the mantra of the world was globalization and throughout the 1990s till 2020 or so, the world seemed to be run by the ideals of a global entity where technologies were mostly developed in Western countries, and the applications were in the global south, including providing the manpower, the services, and so on. 

However, we now live in a de-globalized world, and we need to develop technology sovereignty as soon as possible. We are highly vulnerable in our semiconductor supply chain, our basic computing stack (operating systems, web browsers, enterprise and office applications, even applications that are critical for all kinds of e-governance, in our mobile phone ecosystems, and our telecom technologies). 

It is now more urgent than ever that Indian academia, government, and industry collaborate to develop tech sovereignty as soon as possible, ideally by 2030. This will require creating mission-mode activities and securing funding from both the government and industry. 

Academic institutions must collaborate with specific missions and produce various products essential for our digital mission, including our own chips, operating systems, mobile OS, applications, email system, cloud infrastructure, and more. It is time that we take this supply chain threat extremely seriously.

Indian Engineering Education's biggest problem is that while some of the top institutions provide high-calibre education, the number of such institutes and their capacity are significantly low compared to the population, and as a result, 90% of engineering graduates are not adequately trained. Thus, they are often unemployable or not employable to their fullest capabilities. 

That means we need to either create online education from top institutes to reach a larger population, or also inculcate a hunger for better education among the youth. The youth are more interested in quick shortcuts to earning, and that means learning is taking a back seat, even in top institutes, with placement and salaries taking priority. This has to change drastically. 

We need a mental reset for both parents and the children. They must be given a sense of responsibility towards the country and society. We cannot have just a few institutes and a few thousand students have the opportunity to receive world-class education, while the rest of the country has substandard education. We are already missing the chance to capitalize on the demographic dividend, and unless we make a course correction, we will fall behind significantly compared to the rest of the world.

We are seeing a lot of buzz around the fact that GenAI/Agentic AI can generate code, answer queries that previously required human thinking, and so on. There is also a lot of hype around the fact that AI will replace human jobs, and therefore, people will become unemployable. There is also a significant amount of hype generated by companies developing LLMs. 

I personally believe that while many tasks can be automated with these new AI systems, there are things that AI will not be able to do as well as human beings. For example, while an AI tutor may provide good information, it cannot really replace an experienced teacher whose experience, knowledge, and various anecdotes make learning fun, enjoyable and more experiential. 

However, since the automation through AI for various tasks such as unit-level programming, generation of scripts, glue logic etc, will affect the way our IT engineers work, we definitely need to change our teaching, our projects, homework, and so on. 

We are planning to create a center for educational technology, which will focus on both pedagogic aspects and technology creation that will aid the learning process for future-ready students. If I had more time, I could elaborate on some of the thoughts that come to my mind in this, but let's leave it for another time.

IIIT Hyderabad has already taken a positive step by starting its division of flexible learning. In today's India, any center of excellence in engineering education can only cater to a few thousand students physically in person. 

However, to scale to the needs of the Indian demography and to be further effective by including a lot more people to take advantage of the excellence, we need to reach out to a wider population of students. Innovative methods of online learning, even online degree programs, flexible programs for distant learners, so that their learning is not compromised, or the degree is not just a certificate. 

We must innovate the learning technology and methodology, and have our best educators engaged in delivery. We are taking this responsibility seriously and have already announced a master's degree program, which will be fully online, as well as a minor program for undergraduate students. We plan to expand on this initiative and periodically evaluate its effectiveness to ensure we are doing it well.