AI and ML are playing a transformational role in every sphere of human endeavour. To be exploited to its maximum potential, however, these technologies require to be nurtured by talent and an ecosystem of innovation. Globally, there is huge thrust on making the workforce ready to adapt to AI as well as bring out high-quality research work in AI. Even in India, in particular, there is an urgent need to improve the quality and quantity of research in AI as well as create highly trained professionals. It is no surprise, therefore, that many centres of excellence and research labs are being set up at India’s premier universities to help improve the country’s research output. Many of these centres are set up in partnership with major IT organisations where both the academia and the organisations can get an edge in these areas of emerging technologies. Here is a compilation of the foremost centres that are fostering AI research at Indian universities.

• Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI @ IIT Madras: RBCDSAI has established itself as one of the most productive AI labs in the country now, as measured by publications in top AI conferences. It aims to leverage data science to give insights to make actionable, reliable and impactful decisions for adoption in engineering, finance and healthcare domains. Kicked off in 2017, it one of the pre-eminent interdisciplinary research centres for Data Science and AI in India with the largest network analytics, deep reinforcement learning, and the most active natural language processing and deep learning groups.
• Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence @ IIT Kharagpur: CAI at IIT Kharagpur has been set up in April 2018 in recognition of the increasing importance of the role of Artificial Intelligence. It leverages more than three decades of research and contribution of IIT Kharagpur in fundamental and applied AI. The Centre has been seed-funded by a grant from Capillary Technologies.
• Infosys centre for Artificial Intelligence @ IIIT Delhi: The centre is supported by Infosys Foundation to do cutting edge research in Artificial Intelligence and related areas. It was established in 2016. In addition to its focus on research and innovation, the centre also runs B.Tech. and M.Tech. programmes.
• NV AI Centre @ IIT Hyderabad: IIT Hyderabad and NVIDIA have jointly established India's first NVAITC (NVIDIA AI Technology Centre) to accelerate research on Artificial Intelligence and its commercial adoption. Inaugurated in July 2020, dedicated AI research is being undertaken at the institute. IIT Hyderabad has already procured three NVIDIA DGX-1TM systems and two NVIDIA DGX-2TM systems, and is in the process of procuring more such servers. It will focus on advancing AI research in the areas of agriculture and smart cities, besides Language Understanding.
• Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems @ IISc: RBCCPS is a research and academic centre, under the Division of Interdisciplinary Research, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The centre focuses on foundational and applied research to solve cutting edge problems in CPS like, Robotics, Connected Autonomous Systems, and Socio-Technical Systems like urban transportation and Smart Cities.
• Centre of Excellence in Data Science at PEC Chandigarh: Established in collaboration with the Chandigarh Administration, the CoE has been set up with the mission to encourage, promote, facilitate and execute interdisciplinary research in Data Science.
• Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science @ IIT Bombay: C-MInDS has been set up in February 2020 to contribute towards the growing significance of the role of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and related areas in different application domains. Particularly at IIT Bombay, the activities of the centre are expected to leverage the existence of a strong inter-disciplinary academic community and the important research endeavours carried out by various researchers and faculty members. The Centre aims to be engaged actively to nurture the future talent pool in AI and DS primarily through research, teaching, and collaboration with industry/government.
• Centre of Excellence in AI at NIT Trichy: National Institute of Technology Trichy launched a CoE for AI in September 2020, using the grant from the Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA). The CoE focuses on solving societal issues in crisis management, decision support systems, and healthcare, including the problems presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The centre has already been sanctioned sponsored projects from ISRO, DRDO, and Naval Research Board.
• School of Artificial Intelligence @ IIT Delhi: ScAI was established in September 2020 with the aim to cement IIT Delhi’s leadership position in India and considerably improve its global standing. Being IIT Delhi’s 6th school, it will be broad in its research trajectories and multi-disciplinary in its academic pursuits.
• Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science @ IIT Roorkee: CAIDS has been launched in June 2021 with the aim to play a vital role in shaping India's AI and DS landscape by promoting teaching, training, workforce development, applied research, entrepreneurship, and innovation. CAIDS is a multidisciplinary initiative to be a prominent contributor in various fields, including Finance and Investment Banking, Business, Healthcare, Transportation, Material Informatics, and many others.

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