New Delhi: The School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI) at IIT Delhi will start a new post graduate programme focused on artificial intelligence. IIT Delhi’s Senate, the faculty body responsible for taking all major educational decisions, has approved the proposed programme titled ‘M.Tech in Machine Intelligence & Data Science (MINDS)’.

M. Tech in MINDS will be a flagship educational programme for the school and is expected to begin in July 2022. This will be the second degree offered by ScAI. Earlier, the school started a PhD in AI.

Prof. Mausam, the founding head of the school, said, “Our PhD programme has gathered a lot of interest in its first year. We had a 90% success rate in PhD students joining ScAI last semester, which is exceptional for a young academic unit like ours, as students generally prefer more established academic programmes. But they chose us, suggesting that we have put together a really strong faculty team in AI.”

ScAI currently lists around 40 faculty members on its list, including adjunct faculty members from industry research centers like Microsoft Research, Google AI and IBM Research.

M.Tech in MINDS is planned as an industry-sponsored programme. The students will be expected to work on industry-relevant AI problems, since they will be co-advised by an IIT Delhi professor and a researcher from the sponsoring company. All students with an undergraduate degree in science or engineering will be eligible for the MINDS programme.

Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi, said, “Academic institutions today cannot remain in silos. They must work closely with all stakeholders, including industry, non-profit, and governmental organizations. M.Tech programme in MINDS will energize academia-industry collaboration in AI.”

The MINDS curriculum will include graduate-level courses in core AI technologies like deep learning and data mining, application-oriented courses like computer vision, natural language processing, and AI for healthcare, and also fundamental courses on mathematics underlying modern AI technologies.

The School of Artificial Intelligence was established last year with the aim of strengthening education, research, and applications of AI. It encourages multidisciplinary collaborations between AI and domain experts so that fundamental research impacting real applications could be pursued. The school is making rapid strides since its inception in synergising AI activities across the Institute and in new faculty recruitments.

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