In a groundbreaking initiative, the open source activists association Swecha and IIITH have joined forces to launch viswam.ai, a Centre of Excellence dedicated to developing AI solutions tailored to the unique needs of the Global South. Kiran Chandra, Centre Head of Viswam.ai, and Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, IIITH, this ambitious project seeks to “democratise access to AI” by “leveraging community resources and expertise”. “The driving force behind viswam.ai is a belief that current AI models, often developed by large corporations in the Global North, are ill-suited to address the challenges faced by the Global South,” – Y Kiran Chandra.

Prof. Raghu Reddy lists out the current challenges in designing software architecture, talks about IIIT Hyderabad’s Software Engineering and Research Centre (SERC) current focus and gives a sneak peek into the future. To better understand the importance of software architecture, let’s first look at its evolution which spans across five ages. As per an article published in IEEE software, in the pre-1980s, the focus was primarily on monolithic systems. During the 1980s and 1990s, we began to explore distributed monolithic systems that offered multiple architectural views for different types of stakeholders.

In the wake of establishing and funding research projects, TCS Established the FC Kohli Center at IIITH. In 2015, TCS established the FC Kohli Center on Intelligent Systems at IIITH as a platform to strengthen existing research and facilitate new activities in IT-related fields. To support impactful and long-term research, an endowment was created to fund ambitious projects. The Kohli Challenge Proposal (KCP) Scheme was introduced to identify and support deserving projects. The selection process involved multiple rounds of evaluation by internal and external reviewers, assessing criteria such as innovation, social impact, applied AI, spin-off potential, and system complexity.