A National Initiative on AI Skilling and Research

About Leadingindia.ai

Royal Academy of Engineering,UK under Newton Bhabha Fund has approved a nation wide initiative on "AI and deep learning Skilling and Research" . University college, London, Brunel University, London are collaborators of the project. NVIDIA and AWS Educate, Videoken and Edvantics are industry partners. The initiative got further boost when AICTE saw great merit in the initiative and has recommended all of its 10000 approved institutions to associate with the project.

The project will have approximately 10 collaborator institutions, 100 Lead zonal partners and 1000 basic partner institutions, 10000 teachers and 1000000 Students. At its full scale the project involves the resources of more than 100 million (including cash, kind and human contributions from the partners). Project has the potential to change the landscape of AI Research in India. Due to the Interdisciplinary nature of applications in this domain, the impact will percolate to all the departments of the institutions. Outcome of the project will be tangible in terms of its impact to Engineering community and general public.

Vision

To equip faculty members and students with the industry-driven artificial intelligence and deep-learning tools.

To train and guide faculty members of associate institutes to do cutting-edge research in the areas related to the artificial intelligence and deep-learning.

To actively engage students and industries to have better collaboration for the benefit of the society via student projects.

Mission

To work in a systematic manner with defined goals and targets for fulfilling the vision.

To engage and collaborate with peer institutions for active research network; To generate funds with quality proposals.

To enroll, train and develop quality workforce; To establish the synergistic relationship with leaders of industry, academia, and government.

Background and Abstract of the Project

Background

World is on the cusp of a revolution about new possibilities in AI and Machine Learning. Deep Learning is being used to solve many critical healthcare related issues apart from other important areas that impact society.
India has aspiring young students in thousands of educational institutions in the country. Due to lack of quality faculty and curriculum design issues many of these students are not able to get access to latest skill sets required by the industry. 2-Tier and 3-Tier Institutions are also looking for hand holding to get started in the latest areas of research and to work with industry in their area.
Industry all over the world is facing huge scarcity of trained manpower in machine intelligence. Companies working in autonomous vehicular industry, Advanced data science, image processing, Video analytics are short of talent. The whole spectrum of applications important for our planet are waiting for new innovations and ideas due to this newly found potential around deep learning. The project will help bring India to a prominent place in the field of AI manpower and research.

Background

Project will Skill 10000 faculty/professionals of 1000 institutions in India through 10 collaborators 100 Zonal Lead institutions chosen from different Geographic regions of the country. 100 Zonal Lead institutions will also setup a research group, which will be mentored to do short and long-term research in Machine Learning, AI and Deep learning. Start-ups and industry involved in the Artificial Intelligence related work will partner for providing application-inspired ideas and absorbing the trained graduates of these institutions. Outcome of the project will be tangible in terms of quality manpower for the skill-scare industry and strategic partnership between industry-academia apart from few spin-offs due to this initiative.

Objectives

To make cutting edge skills and supercomputing infrastructure available to the wider community of academicians and researchers through a thoughtfully created network of approximately 10 collaborators and 100 lead institutions across India.
To initiate, sustain and nourish research groups in Artificial Intelligence. Based on the additional resource commitments by respective institutions, some of them can grow as a good research center.
To motivate the learner community for exploiting the potential of start-ups and innovations in this area and connecting them with the real-life problems of industry.

Overall it will enhance the content, quality, capacity and collaboration of Indian Engineering education ecosystem.

Outcomes

10000 trained people in Artificial Intelligence who in turn will be helping to train around 1000000 Students every year.
100 Research Groups working in different critical areas to solve some of the pressing problems in front of mankind.
10 collaborator and 100 Lead Zonal institutions connected with Industry for live projects and helping their students to better prepare for the industry-required skills.
Marked improvement in the quality landscape and skill gap which will result in an overall buoyancy in the Indian higher education system to bring it at par with International standards

Wider Impact

The Project has inbuilt ingredients for engaging wider engineering community including people from professional Organizations, Industry and Consultant Networks. There is an immediate need to expand the number of people who can innovate and sustain the ongoing revolution in Artificial Intelligence Applications. This can be achieved if there are more institutions who are willing to adopt the new skills into their ecosystem and produce more trained professionals. Along with this they should usher into new age research which will help to bring a buoyancy into their overall motivation and confidence to bring more quality and progressive practices for a systemic change. This will also bring the partnering Institutions to interact with each other and make broader groups to handle the pressing problems in this domain. The flow of knowledge, innovation and skills will be both ways involving the Engineering Community and academic institutions. Public will be benefitted as many of them will be the stakeholders in these activities and will be benefitted indirectly. The trained individuals will get good jobs and will bring benefits to their families and the wider community. The applications that may get developed through the inputs from the Research Groups will be of great relevance for the public. It will also help in bringing an incremental change in the Indian economy in the medium and long term. Initiative actively looking for experts who can help in skilling and mentoring these institutions.

Impact on the Associates depending on type of association

Institutions will feel privileged to contribute in the progress of the higher education system of the nation.
Institutions will be poised to occupy the leadership position in the Machine Learning Research in the region based on the type of association.
Department and Institutions will be able to create a sustainable network of stakeholders who can be further energized for different initiatives.
It will help to bring out quality publications, Thesis and other artefacts of Research.
It will help them to further apply for additional funding in the advance areas of Research.
It will expose the faculty to the different new ideas, innovations and unexplored dimensions.
Most important and invaluable contribution will be that It will usher in bringing quality research culture, team thinking, solving real issues.

Impact on Individuals depending on type of association

To learn essential machine learning and deep learning technology and improve the skillset to develop powerful AI applications across various domains.
To expertise in both technology as well as in problem domain (i.e. domain knowledge)
To understand the practical challenges experienced in a typical AI development workspace and learn best practices in building AI applications
To grow research network with top deep learning research group of peers around the world
To prepare for niche jobs that needs Deep Learning hands on experience and related skillset
To publish high quality research papers and patents on state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learning research

Role of UK and Industry Collaborators

UK Associate

UK partner will be providing Collaborative support in terms of Technical and Research aspects of the project. The expertise of the University in machine learning will help the project to design the content of the training.
UK Partner will also help in strategizing the growth of Research Groups in different Lead institutions through the team led by Project Director.
Depending on availability of funds Few people from the Lead institutions can visit UK for a wider discussion and can widen the collaboration in other areas and strengthen International Collaboration.

Industry Associate

Industry involvement in the project will help to keep the technical content of the workshops to the mark and Industry will be able to pin point any ongoing updation in the field.
Industry may be able to connect with this consortium of institutions for a win-win regarding their Intern or hiring requirements in this skill-scare domain.
Industry will support the project with few live projects to enrich the quality of the projects students are doing in the institutions.
Industry will get the promotions in all the communications, events, conferences, workshops of the project.
Industry will be expected to spare speakers/mentors based on mutual convenience and consent.
Industry will be able to associate with institutions for different technologies and products and may come up with special offers for the associated institutions.