IIT Jodhpur, University of Buffalo announce joint CoE for AI and data science

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Jodhpur and the University of Buffalo have jointly announced a joint centre of excellence for artificial intelligence and data science. The two institutions signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the IIT-UB joint Centre of Excellence hu.

This centre is expected to advance long-term and international collaboration in education and research. It will also facilitate student and faculty member exchange programs for research works.

To be sure, IIT Jodhpur has multiple CoEs for research and education in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Some of the prominent ones include Brain Science and Application for brain-machine interface; Mathematical and Computational Economics for research in analytical and applied mathematics; CoE in Intelligent Infrastructure using AI and big data analytics; CoE in AI-based Precision Healthcare.

AI continues to be a hot field drawing attention from industry, academia, and even governments. In this year’s Union Budget announcement, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about ‘Make AI in India’ and ‘Make AI work for India’. Under this, she announced the setting up of dedicated CoEs for AI in top institutes of the country. “This will galvanize an effective AI ecosystem and nurture quality human resources in the field,” Sitharaman said.

As per a recent report by staffing firm Teamlease Digital India (released yesterday) had 45,000 job openings for AI engineers in February 2023 alone. Further, data scientists and machine learning engineers were also found to be the most sought-after job roles. The report also said that AI professionals with over eight years of experience can earn salaries of up to 45 lakh per annum.