Banaras Hindu University gets future-ready with AI and Machine Learning skills

The Indian Institute of Technology - Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU) and Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This is to develop cloud-ready job skills by providing access to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate program, and to help establish an artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) Cloud Research Lab. The Cloud Research Lab will provide students with opportunities to use AWS Cloud technology to pursue research initiatives that focus on AI and ML innovation for India.

According to an Accenture report titled, "Rewire for Growth", AI has the potential to add nearly US $1 trillion to India's economy by 2035. India, as the fastest growing economy and with the second largest population in the world, has a significant stake in the AI revolution. This needs to be implemented and encouraged in the areas of health, education, environment, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and various other sectors. Delivering home-grown pioneering technological AI solutions, and simultaneously building the foundational R&D capabilities will enable Indian businesses to innovate with #AI4India.

Under the MoU agreement, IIT-BHU gains access to the resources in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate program and curriculum designed for higher education institutions to incorporate in to their courses. This collaboration will help accelerate cloud-related technical expertise for students and boost their readiness as they prepare to undertake the industry-recognized certification. AWS offers over 125 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management ; and these features will be available to IIT-BHU faculty, researchers and students to develop innovative solutions for India

"As Chairman for the Committee on Leveraging AI for National Missions in Key Sectors, I am acutely aware of the critical need to develop a proficient and robust talent base in the country in core areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning applied to problems in various sectors. As IITs are the premier engineering institutes in India, we have an obligation to ensure that our brightest and the most talented students in the country have easy access to best-in-class technology," said Professor Rajeev Sangal, Director, IIT-BHU. "This MoU agreement helps our students develop technical proficiency with AWS Cloud skills and its advanced technologies in artificial Intelligence and machine learning before they graduate."

"With the resources and tools provided by the global AWS Educate program, the educators and students in IIT-BHU gain access to the latest and most innovative AWS Cloud technologies, along with open course content contributed by other top education institutions around the world. This helps both educators and students in keeping close to the forefront of technology advancement and industry requirements," said Rahul Sharma, President - Public Sector, Amazon Internet Services Private Limited. "We are pleased to work with IIT BHU to build a strong foundation of students skilled in using AWS Cloud, including advanced technologies such as AI, ML, serverless computing, big data analysis, Internet of Things, and many others. This helps nurture young talent in their quest for innovation, which is a critical cornerstone in advancing the economic growth for India."