Guwahati: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati has signed an MoU with the Mehta Family Foundation (MFF), USA, to set up a school of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence to promote these courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, Hindustan Times reported quoting PTI.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed virtually on Wednesday, by IIT-G director T G Sitharam and chief executive officer of Mehta Family Foundation, in the presence of the director of IITG Board of Governors, Dr Rajiv Modi, and Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India, Prof Krishnaswamy Vijaraghavan.
The first batch of B Tech students for this school will be admitted through JEE in the academic year 2021-22, a release issued by IIT-G said.
Sitharam was quoted as saying that IIT Guwahati has always endeavoured to play a leadership role by diversifying the flavour of its academic programmes, and the Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is another important initiative that will bridge the gap of highly skilled personnel that exists in these emerging fields.
“I take this opportunity to thank Mehta Family Foundation for its enormous support in establishing this school which will offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, B Tech in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence from this academic year,” he was quoted as saying.
Mehta said, the explosion of data across all fields of knowledge continues unabated, and just like computer science changed the world, data science and artificial intelligence are poised to do the same.
Vijayraghavan was quoted as saying that with the available expertise, IIT-G will take up this school as a foundation to set up data collection sites in the eastern region of the country for various sectors such as healthcare, climate, transportation, security and other areas and convert the huge data into effective knowledge and understanding to serve the society in a better way.
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