As the buzz around machine learning and artificial intelligence gains traction, we find more mid and senior-level candidates veering towards this field. Besides massive open online courses (MOOCs), the other way to gain knowledge and understand where the industry is heading is by following top research groups in India. These groups usually are on top of the industry trends and follow works related to computer vision, unsupervised learning, natural language processing with a focus on Indian languages, information retrieval and data mining, among others.
In India, research is usually centred around top level institutes like the IITs and IIITs, which have dedicated groups comprising students and faculty members. These groups are focused on exploring the theoretical foundation of algorithms and how they can be applied to industry problems.
In this article, we list down top research groups to follow in India:
Indian Institute of Science’s Machine Learning Special Interest Group: Touted as one of the best research groups in India, especially the one with a beautiful campus, IISc’s MLSIG features several talented students and faculty members engaged in cutting-edge research on a variety of aspects of ML and related fields. These works range from theoretical foundations to new algorithms as well as other exciting applications. IISc MLSIG has a great roster of events that covers topics such as deep learning with GPUs, data mining (models, algorithms and applications), text analysis, knowledge representation and reasoning with DNN. MLSIG is also doing cutting-edge research that is published in top journals and conferences. Some of the research topics are ML in text mining, ML in computer vision, graphical models, clustering, support vector machines and kernel-based learning methods. To join the mailing list, click here.
IIT Kanpur’s Special Interest Group On Machine Learning Of Computer Science: IIT Kanpur’s SIGML features areas of interest like ML, data mining and related fields. Besides organising reading groups, it also features a lecture series on topics such as extreme multi-label classification and deep learning theory, Bayesian model and online and stochastic optimisation and learning. The group also holds regular seminars on ML and data mining. SIGML reading groups focus on topics like deep learning, kernels and Bayesian graphical model. Non-IIT-K learners can follow the events and sessions by filling this joining request.
ISI Kolkata’s Vision and Learning Research Group (VLRG): ISI’s VLRG does a lot of research in pattern recognition, image processing and computer vision. Set up in 2011, the research group has also published several papers in IEEE, ISMM, ICIP and ISVC, especially in areas like image and video processing, image reconstruction and image and pattern recognition. The group is led by Prof Bhabatosh Chanda and features outstanding faculty members like Prof Nikhil Pal, Prof Dipti Prasad Mukherjee and includes Post-Doc Fellows and Research Personnel.
IIT Delhi’s Data Analytics and Intelligence Research (DAIR): IIT Delhi’s DAIR is led by stellar faculty members Mausam, Sayan Ranu and Parag Singla. A highly collaborative group, DAIR runs several research collaborations with researchers from University of Washington, Rochester University, Max Plank Institute, Bar Ilan University, University of Texas Dallas, and IIT Bombay. This IIT Delhi group is also very active in publishing research papers at international conferences — for example, Sayan Ranu, assistant professor in the CSE department has been awarded the ACM SIGMOD 2018 Most Reproducible Paper Award for his paper Debunking The Myths Of Influence Maximisation: An In-Depth Benchmarking Study. The group’s May 2018 paper — Which Route Should A Cab Driver Follow To Find A Customer will be presented in KDD 2018.
Last Word
Research is the bulwark for achieving progress in critical industry applications. India’s research communities that have forged a great industry connect are addressing business-centric problems. For example, Last year, New York-based CA Technologies teamed up with IIIT Hyderabad researchers to collaborate on applied research projects which will include next-generation interfaces such as NLP, AI and ML as which we had reported in February. In fact, IIT Delhi is also aiming for an equal split between government and industry research.
