IBM Renews Collaboration with IIT-B and IISc, Bangalore, to drive Innovation in Hybrid Cloud and AI, including Generative AI

IBM has extended its research partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, to transform and propel ground-breaking developments in the hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors. To improve AI research in India, IIT Bombay joined the IBM AI Horizon Network in 2018. In 2021, IBM and IISc Bangalore inaugurated the IBM-IISc Hybrid Cloud lab to advance research on hybrid cloud technologies and spur ground-breaking ideas in this field.

IBM's collaboration seeks to drive innovation and provide practical solutions to complex global challenges by harnessing the intellectual prowess of students, faculty, and industry researchers. The initiative aims to expand the boundaries of knowledge, explore innovative approaches, and improve technology across various domains ultimately advancing towards a more advanced and efficient future.

This collaboration will focus on several areas including

• Expanding upon previous research in natural language processing and question answering, the focus is on delivering more comprehensive and precise responses. In terms of performance optimization, the key priority is achieving rapid and efficient results, especially when conducting inferencing on devices like smartphones and within hybrid cloud environments.
• Machine learning for time series data involves the utilization of deep generative AI models for multi-variate datasets and self-supervised representation learning models. These innovations hold the potential to apply foundation models and generative AI across diverse fields, including healthcare, Industry 4.0, and the development of smarter cities.
• The objective is to create advanced computer programs proficient in detecting and explaining fake news and partial truths using sophisticated Artificial Intelligence techniques. The aim is to build upon prior research on biases and trust in AI and enhance the accuracy of detecting false information while providing thorough explanations for clarity.
• Developing new technologies to efficiently manage and optimize workloads within a hybrid cloud environment, including edge clouds, quantum-classical, and serverless. The objective is to harness the power of observability and analytics capabilities across this diverse multi-cloud environment, enabling seamless orchestration of workloads and enhancing the performance and reliability of applications.
• Developing techniques for sustainable computing, which involve methods to accurately quantify and optimize carbon emissions for hybrid cloud workloads, alongside investigating emerging architectures to create a balance between performance and power tradeoffs.

"The synergy between the abundant talent in IIT Bombay and a technological leader like IBM can not only expand the horizons of knowledge but also address problems of national importance, such as affordable healthcare, educational outreach, and smart management of growing industrial and urban infrastructure", added Prof. Sachin Patwardhan, Dean (R&D), IIT Bombay.

"The engagement with IBM researchers is helping us explore some of the practical dimensions of the research challenges in Cloud platforms and sustainability, and investigate the means to democratize access to quantum hardware in the Cloud for scientific and enterprise applications. Our doctoral students also appreciate the chance to engage with leading researchers and practitioners from IBM Research," said Prof Yogesh Simmhan, Associate Professor, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, IISc. The collaboration with IISc is led by Prof Simmhan, along with faculty members Dr J Lakshmi (Supercomputer Education and Research Centre), Prof Parimal Parag (Department of Electrical Communication Engineering) and Prof Prathosh AP (Department of Electrical Communication Engineering).
Speaking on the collaborations Dr. Amith Singhee, Director of IBM Research India said, "Collaboration fuels innovation, and our collaboration with IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore underscores the importance of combining diverse expertise. By merging IBM's technological prowess with the cutting-edge research skills of these prestigious institutions, we foster a collaborative ecosystem that pushes the boundaries of scientific discovery. Together, we strive to explore new horizons and address pressing challenges, empowering India's research community to create tangible impact and shape a brighter future for all."

Over the past few years, the partnership between IBM and both IIT Bombay as well as IISc has produced significant research outcomes and technological advancements. These collaborations have covered a wide range of topics, including natural language processing, complex question answering, trust and explainability in AI, IT operations, distributed computing, and AI for Code. These joint efforts have resulted in numerous research publications, as well as MTech and PhD theses. For instance, the collaboration between IBM and IIT Bombay has led to the application of machine learning for Indian languages NLP, addressing challenges related to low resource understanding of Hindi language sense, intent, sentiment, and the comprehension of documents in Hindi.