Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Rajesh P N Rao (9 December 2024)
Speaker: Prof. Rajesh P N Rao, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Title: The Predictive Brain: An Active Predictive Coding Framework for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
Date: 9 December 2024
Summary of the talk: More than half the volume of the human brain is occupied by the neocortex which has delineated roles of visual perception in the visual cortex, action in the motor cortex, cognition in the prefrontal cortex, etc. However, recent experiments indicate that almost all cortical areas, even those traditionally labelled as sensory, are modulated by upcoming actions. Parallel data from anatomical studies point to major outputs from almost all cortical areas to sub-cortical centers that control the body. In this talk, Prof Rao will present the active predictive coding framework, which puts actions center stage in natural and artificial intelligence. He will review the Bayesian brain hypothesis, and then discuss predictive coding, a specific implementation of the Bayesian brain hypothesis that acknowledges cortical anatomy and physiology. This sets the stage for his more recent active predictive coding model, which suggests new explanations for how we recognize an object and its parts using eye movements, why perception seems stable despite eye movements, how we learn compositional representations of the world, how we plan complex actions by composing sequences of sub-goals and simpler actions, and how we form episodic memories of our sensory-motor experiences and learn abstract concepts such as a family tree. The talk will also briefly cover his work on brain co-processors that use artificial intelligence to interact directly with the brain to restore or augment human function.
About the speaker: Prof. Rajesh P N Rao is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang Professor in the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He is also the co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology, adjunct professor in the Bioengineering department, and faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UW. His research interests span computational neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence.
Celebrating 25 Years of LTRC (6 and 7 December 2024)
Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC) at IIIT, Hyderabad is celebrating its Silver Jubilee (25 years of completion) in a two day event on 6 and 7 December 2024.
Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC) was established in October 1999 in response to the preeminent scientific challenge of our time – enabling machines to read, understand and derive meaning from human languages especially in the Indian context and Indian languages. It was, perhaps, first such a research theme focused centre in the country and today LTRC is the largest academic centre of speech and language technology in South Asia.
LTRC at IIITH, founded 25 years ago, has become one of India’s leading institutions in Language Technology research.
When Modern AI Meets Classical Robotics
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When Modern AI Meets Classical Robotics
IIITH’s Self Driving Car is an electric vehicle that performs point to point Autonomous Driving with collision avoidance capabilities over a wide area. Equipped with 3D LIDAR, Depth Cameras, GPS systems and AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System which essentially means sensors on three axes to estimate it’s orientation in space), the car can also accept Open Set Natural Language commands and follow those commands to reach a desired destination. SLAM-based point cloud mapping is used to map the campus environment and a LIDAR-guided real-time state estimation allows for localization while driving.
Smart City Living Lab from IIIT Hyderabad has been awarded the Best Education Institute Exhibit of the year at the eighth edition of India Mobile Congress held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, in concurrence with WTSA’24, the governing conference of the ITU Standardization Sector (ITU-T) from 15 – 18 October 2024.
Team India wins at the International Linguistics Olympiad 2024. Competing against 206 participants drawn from 51 teams across 38 countries, the Indian contestants shone at the 21st International Linguistic Olympiad (IOL) held in Brasília, Brazil, from July 23 to July 31, 2024. The Indian team demonstrated their prowess in the individual categories with Animikha Dutta Dhar bagging a silver medal, Shrilakshmi Venkatraman and Faraz Ahmed Siddiqui winning a bronze medal each and Ananya Agarwal receiving an Honourable Mention.
International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad is placed in the band of 601–800 by Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2025 rankings. This year, more than 2,000 institutions from 115 countries and territories were ranked.
IIITH was ranked 74 (last year 82) among the top universities (including both government and private) in India, and ranked 47 (last year 55) among top engineering colleges (including both government and private) in India by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024 rankings.
Remote Labs project team – Akshit Gureja (UG5 ECD), Vedant Nipane (UG4 ECE), Nagesh Walchatwar (MS 1st year) and Devansh Kantesaria (UG3 ECD) working with Dr. Sachin Chaudhari have won first prize at the Hyderabad regionals of the 5G and 6G hackathon conducted by Telecom Centres of Excellence India (TCOE) India on behalf of Department of Telecommunication (DoT), India at IIIT Hyderabad on 26 – 27 September.
Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list – 39 (graduated – 3) Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list – 39 (graduated – 3) Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list […]
Remote Labs team – Akshit Gureja (UG5 ECD) and Nagesh Walchatwar (MS 1st year) working with Dr. Sachin Chaudhari from Signal Processing and Communication Research Center (SPCRC) was selected by Qualcomm under their Qualcomm Design in India Program (QDIP) to exhibit their innovative project as a part of Qualcomm’s booth at India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2024, organised at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi from 15 to 18 October.
Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list – 39 (graduated – 3) Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list – 39 (graduated – 3) Total students for Dean’s list – 453 (graduated – 110) Total students for Research list […]