UoE-DUK Partnership for CoE in AI announced at India's first GenAI Conclave in Kochi

GenAI Conclave in Kochi, 11-12 July 2024

Sethu Vijayakumar: Keynote at the IBM GenAI Conclave

The University of Edinburgh, led by the School of Informatics and Edinburgh Global, announced a new partnership with the Government of Kerala, India and the Digital University Kerala to help establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Artificial Intelligence, with an emphasis on embodied (robotics) and embedded systems -- at the new Digital Science Park, Thiruvananthapuram in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute. This engagement, which also has other UK universities involved with similar CoEs (Oxford leading on Cyber Security and Manchester leading on Graphene) will have four strands of engagement:

CM Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurating the Gen AI Conclave

Advisory: To share best practices to establish and maintain a successful centre of excellence in AI for social good and support research-oriented activities in Kerala, including building industry linkages
Faculty and ECR Mobility: To promote joint research, publications, patents. Provide opportunities to be part of existing innovative R&D projects (EU, UKRI) at UoE resulting in the joint research publications, joint extramural research grants and IP generation.
International PhD Studentships: To train the next generation in Gen AI and Trustworthy Robotics technologies and build academic talent pool
Funded scholarships to do PhD at UoE: this trained scholar pool to contribute back to DSP/DUK post their graduation.
Entrepreneurship: Creation of a knowledge exchange corridor between Kerala’s entrepreneurial sector and Edinburgh’s data driven innovation hubs through best practices exchange and training programmes. Access for Start-ups to Edinburgh’s AI Accelerator initiatives; mentoring and support for international market access

This initiative was formally announced at India's first GenAI Conclave at Kochi on Jul 11 and 12, 2024. Professor Sethu Vijayakumar, who will act as the International Academic Chair for this project, was one of the keynote speakers at this prestigious international event, organised by IBM, with the participation of dignitaries like the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Industries Minister P Rajeev, NASA Astronaut Steve Smith and VP of IBM Dinesh Nirmal.