Interview with Director Pramod Kumar Jain

IIT (BHU), Varanasi is one of the oldest engineering institutes in India. Located in Uttar Pradesh, the institution started its life as the Banaras Engineering College in 1919, and became the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University in 1968. The Indian Institute of Technology tag was conferred in 2012. 

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain, Director, IIT (BHU) Varanasi was appointed as the Director at IIT – BHU from August 1,  2018. Analytics India Magazine caught up with him to understand the IIT’s contribution to the field of AI & ML in India, and the ongoing research at the premiere institute. IIT (BHU), Varanasi has 13 branches of engineering and three inter-disciplinary schools.

AIM: What are the major drivers in scientific research?

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain: Scientific research requires relevance of purpose, originality of objectives, reproducibility of results, and involvement of critical brain faculties. It is an original investigation directed towards gaining new knowledge through existing concepts. It is generally done in a focused area which may lead to the generation of new and better insights through creativity and critical thinking. 

AIM: Tell us about the ongoing research in the field of AI/ML and data science at IIT (BHU) Varanasi.

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain: IIT(BHU) has been contributing to theoretical as well as applied research in the core areas of AI/ML, with the support of various government agencies and industries. The area of Data Analytics and Predictive Technologies (DAPT) has been identified as one of the vibrant and emerging fields. DAPT refers to applying pattern recognition and inference engine as a smart decision support interface to take timely decisions and deploy necessary actuation to take holistic control of the real-life situations, either online or offline. Today, the term DAPT is used for systems involving intelligent pattern-recognition based decision support interfaces backed up by densely embedded sensors and actuators, interconnected by the Internet of Things (IoT), with computations occurring either within the network, or at the edge, or in the cloud–to observe, control, and optimise the performance of…