Prof. P J Narayanan stepped down as Director after an impactful 12-year tenure. Prof. Narayanan hands over charge to Prof Sandeep Shukla, who assumes office as the new Director of the institute from 20 August 2025. Prof Narayanan, who took over as Director in April 2013, is widely credited with steering IIITH to new heights in research excellence, academic innovation, and industry collaboration. Under his leadership, the institute significantly expanded its research footprint, strengthened interdisciplinary programs, and nurtured a strong culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. His tenure also saw IIITH deepen its engagement with government, industry, and global academic networks, cementing its position as one of India’s premier technology institutes. Prof Sandeep Shukla, an internationally recognised expert in cyber-physical systems, formal verification, and cyber security, joins IIITH from IIT Kanpur.

If you have ever wondered what underlies research in futuristic technologies, then the Signal Processing and Communications Research Centre at IIITH is a good place to start at. Some current/futuristic technologies related to which the researchers in SPCRC work on include graph signal processing, satellite-based IoT networks, reflecting intelligent surface based communication, DNA storage, quantum computing, security and privacy. Here’s a sneak peek into the broad areas of research that are carried out at one of the oldest centres of IIITH. In nature, signals are everywhere. Speech, audio, images, sensory data, ECG signals, EEG signals, astronomical signals and many many more are all signals and to extract useful information from them is the art/science of signal processing. At IIITH, Prof. Santosh Nannuru and Prof. Praful Mankar work in different aspects of signal processing – graph signal processing and localization and tracking.

In his Independence Day address to the IIIT Hyderabad community, Prof. P J Narayanan, Director, IIIT Hyderabad reiterated that democracy thrives on autonomy – but in today’s world, real independence also means freedom from digital dependence. Prof. Narayanan emphasised that the time has come for India to build its own secure technological foundation. Greetings to all on the occasion of India’s 79th Independence Day. August 15th is a very important day for every Indian, as it is the day we attained political independence. An important characteristic of our freedom struggle was its non-violent nature. We built a vibrant democracy that is the envy of the world. But democracy is not only about electing representatives; it’s also about the autonomy to make decisions at local, community, and institutional levels. We should ask ourselves if our autonomy is increasing or decreasing and if we are including everyone in the decision-making process. This is a big challenge for our maturing democracy.