UPES Inaugurates Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence to Drive Innovation and Research Excellence

Dehradun, April 17, 2025: The School of Computer Science (SoCS) at UPES proudly announced the inauguration of the Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence, a transformative initiative aimed at advancing interdisciplinary research, education, and innovation in AI and Machine Learning. The inauguration ceremony was graced by Dr. Shailesh Kumar, Chief Data Scientist, Centre of Excellence in AI/ML, Reliance Jio, who joined as the Chief Guest.

The Centre has been conceptualised to bridge the gap between AI’s immense potential and its practical, scalable adoption across diverse fields. Its core objectives include building foundational and advanced AI competencies, creating educational tools to enhance productivity, supporting long-term research, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and translating academic research into commercially viable solutions. The initiative aims to empower faculty, students, and industry partners to meaningfully integrate AI into their work, positioning UPES as a future-ready institution in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Operating with a strategic vision, the Centre focuses on five key pillars: research and development, training and capacity building, product and tool creation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and commercialisation. In its initial phase, it will launch training modules in Python, statistics, and machine learning fundamentals, followed by advanced courses in Computer Vision, NLP, and scientific computing. Alongside, proprietary AI tools—such as quiz generators and lip-synced video creation platforms—will be developed to support educators and learners alike.

The Centre is also committed to developing AI-powered teaching aids and cultivating a culture of innovation through hackathons, interdisciplinary forums, and academic-industry collaborations. It will facilitate impactful research across domains including healthcare, education, finance, and the social sciences. Over time, the Centre aims to produce commercial-ready AI solutions, promote entrepreneurship, and enable intellectual property creation. Its long-term goal is to offer consulting services, embed AI tools across university operations, and keep UPES at the forefront of applied AI innovation.

Dr. Shailesh Kumar, delivering the keynote address, remarked, “AI is prompting us to reimagine every aspect of our lives from how we live and learn, to how we grow food, manufacture products, shop, and stay healthy. As a horizontal technology, AI will enhance the efficiency of every human system and boost the productivity of every human endeavour. Centres of Excellence in AI, such as the one being launched at UPES, will drive future innovations that transform both industry and society. They will empower students to learn, experiment, and innovate with AI, while bringing together domain experts, data scientists, and policymakers to help build an ‘AI-first Bharat.’ Bharat stands to gain immensely from AI but with such Centres, AI will also gain immensely from Bharat. With this launch, UPES underscores its commitment to fostering cutting-edge innovation, collaboration, and national impact in the AI ecosystem.”

Speaking on the significance of the launch, Professor Vijayshekhar Chellaboina, Dean of the School of Computer Science at UPES, said, “We are thrilled to launch our Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence, expanding our innovation ecosystem alongside existing centres in IoT, Cybersecurity, and AR/VR. The inauguration of our state-of-the-art High Performance Computing facility marks a new era of research and collaboration. This powerful infrastructure will empower faculty, students, and external partners to drive cutting-edge discoveries.”

Lalit Sachan, Director, Centre for Artificial Intelligence, added, “AI capabilities must be local, scalable, and open to all. With this Centre, we are laying the foundation not just for cutting-edge research, but for nurturing the next generation of AI talent in India. At UPES — the University of Tomorrow — we believe that empowering students with this level of infrastructure is how institutions shape the future: by giving their people the tools to create it. With a diverse set of schools and a strong base of researchers and students across disciplines, UPES is uniquely positioned to unlock the full potential of AI across domains — from law and design to health sciences and engineering.”

To support these ambitions, UPES has made an investment commitment of ₹50 crore in state-of-the-art infrastructure and facility development. The Centre features one of the most advanced AI computing setups among private universities in India, including multiple Newgen NVIDIA DGX H100 clusters with 16 GPUs, 1.28 Terabytes of GPU RAM, and Petabyte scale storage. This robust system—housed in the newly renovated IT Tower—enables high-fidelity simulations, concurrent execution of large-scale LLMs, and rapid prototyping of AI-driven tools.

The inauguration drew participation from academic leaders, industry experts, faculty members, and students—collectively marking the beginning of a new era of AI-driven transformation at UPES.