The Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and four Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have created and launched an online course on applied artificial intelligence (AI). The course is aimed at learners with at least a basic knowledge of machine learning; students in their final year of Engineering, science postgraduates, PhD scholars, and professionals. It will begin at the end of the month.
The course contains 33-sessions that will cover how to implement AI-based solutions in domains like healthcare and smart city projects, as well as how to scale these projects to an industrial level. The four partnering IITs are from four different locations: Kharagpur, Madras, Palakkad, Goa. According to a report by the government-run website IndiaAI, the curriculum will include the fundamentals of AI accelerators and system setup, accelerated deep learning, end-to-end accelerated deep science, and will explore industrial use-cases of accelerated AI.
Several leading national institutions will intermittently participate in the course. For instance, learners will have code walkthroughs and industrial case studies that are part of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). NSM is spearheaded by the Department of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) through C-DAC and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). NSM aims to enhance research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a supercomputing grid, with the National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
Due to the greater adoption of technology in healthcare, education, finance, and almost every other sector of the economy, there is a growing need for digital and technical experts to meet the demand for modern solutions. In fact, the demand for cybersecurity domain experts increased two-fold in the past year. The government through its various educational institutions and agencies has been pushing for digital upskilling and reskilling of the country’s workforce, focusing on digital technologies.
Earlier this month, OpenGov Asia reported that IIT-Madras and an Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-Ahmedabad)-incubated start-up, GUVI, announced free Python and AI training courses. They are available to more than one million socially and economically disadvantaged youngsters in India. The Python and AI skills included in this initiative focus on face recognition technology that any beginner can master. The courses will be taught in various vernacular languages including English, Tamil, Hindi, and Telugu, among others. Free access to the courses will be available through a registration process enabled on GUVI’s official website.
More recently, the IIT in Guwahati, in partnership with a private player, has begun a postgraduate (PG) certificate programme in cybersecurity and a PG certificate programme in AI. The eight-month-long course focusing on cybersecurity will equip students with subjects that will help them become adept for careers as network security specialists, cybersecurity analysts, cybersecurity architects, cybersecurity managers, etc. The nine-month-long course on AI and deep learning will cover fundamental modules such as Python programming, data analytics, neural networks, computer vision, image recognition, etc. The course will prepare students for careers as AI and ML engineers, computer vision experts, software R&D engineers, cloud support engineers, etc.