First Indo-EU proposal as PI accepted!

Robotics in India has been mainly challenged by the high cost of adoption, lack of accessibility, and lack of skilled talent. Consequently, our project IRAS-HUB will address the lack of skilled talent in robotics technology in India. 

The EU has sanctioned funding of ~800,000 Euros for three years involving ten partners from 5 countries. As the lead institute, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi will collaborate with the following partners: 

1. International Institute of Information Technology, India

2. Indian Institute Of Information Technology, India

3. Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy

4. Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

5. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain

6. CRETHIDEV, Greece

7. Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India

8. Addverb Technologies, India

9. Technical University of Crete / Πολυτεχνείο Κρήτης, Greece

Without the significant support from the entire team from India and the EU, including my IIITD colleagues Sanat K. Biswas and Sayan Basu Roy, it would not have been possible. The project will formally start in January 2023, and we look forward to the support and collaboration from all stakeholders, including fellow academicians, public agencies, and robotics industries, in this national-level capacity-building initiative.

Best Projects: Machine Learning Course [CSE343/ECE343]

The monsoon 2021 offering of Machine Learning course has around 150 students and together we executed 40+ different course projects related to the subject. The students undertook the projects on a wide range of application areas and I am glad to announce the seven best course projects. The shortlisting of the projects was done keeping in mind their uniqueness of the problem, organized methodology and analysis of results. Congratulations to all the students for their efforts and teamwork!

Identifying the presence of sexism in workplace conversations

Blog: https://medium.com/@shrivatsa19335/identifying-the-presence-of-sexism-in-workplace-conversations-e0183aeaca39

Students: Ishika Joshi, Keshav Gambhir, Sachleen Kaur, Shrivatsa Mishra

Predicting IMDb movie rating using Machine Learning

Blog: https://medium.com/@shrivatsa19335/identifying-the-presence-of-sexism-in-workplace-conversations-e0183aeaca39

Students: Shrivatsa Mishra, Keshav Gambhir, Ishika Joshi, Sachleen Kaur

Sign Langauge to Text Conversion

Blog: https://medium.com/@bhaveshsood13/sign-langauge-to-text-conversion-ba4ad19a26e3

Students: Bhavesh Sood, Vishwajeet Kumar, Ajeet Yadav

Personality Prediction using Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Blog: https://medium.com/@dolly19304/personality-prediction-using-myers-briggs-type-indicator-56888416e87c

Students: Vidhi Sharma, Dolly Sidar, Udit Bhati

Music Genre Classification

Blog: https://medium.com/@ashitaboyina/music-genre-classification-70ae70469403

Students: Ashita Boyina, Rahul Dahiya, Sai Chandan, Arunim Gupta

Movie Recommendation for a group of friends

Blog: https://bhavyanarang09.medium.com/movie-recommendation-for-a-group-of-friends-91cf4963a0ee

Students: Aniansh Raj Singh, Bhavya Narang, Harshal Dev, Satwik Tiwari

Prediction of Hit Songs based on Multimodal Data

Blog: https://medium.com/@parth19069/prediction-of-hit-songs-based-on-multimodal-data-5fd76acc7bce

Students: Parth Chhabra, Samyak Jain, Sarthak Johari, Yash Mathne

Best Projects: Machine Learning Course (CSE343/ECE343)

The monsoon 2020 offering of Machine Learning course has around 150 students and together we executed 45 different course projects related to the subject. The students undertook the projects on a wide range of application areas. Based on the reviews of our excellent TA team, I reviewed and I am glad to announce the 9 best projects of this offering. The shortlisting of the projects was done keeping in mind their uniqueness of the problem, organized methodology and analysis of results. After much analysis, I am glad to announce the best course projects and congratulations to all the students for their efforts and teamwork!

Accident Severity Analysis

Blog: https://parasmehan123.medium.com/accident-severity-analysis-using-machine-learning-6165ac4a2cc7

Students: Paras Mehan, Isha Gupta, Raghav Gupta

Automated Music Playlist Generator

Blog: https://arka399.medium.com/automated-song-playlist-generator-ff9c65a97285

Students: Arka Sarkar, Pankil Kalra and Daksh Thapar

Classification of Human Posture Using Accelerometer Data

Blog: https://tejas18110.medium.com/classification-of-human-posture-using-accelerometer-data-c8740adaaeff

Students: Anmol Kumar, Rishabh Chauhan, and Tejas Dubhir

Finding the discriminative power of features to analyze how different parameters affect the rating of a book

Blog: https://osheensachdev.medium.com/finding-the-discriminative-power-of-features-to-analyse-how-different-parameters-affect-the-rating-5f405bb87cf8

Students: Vrinda Narayan, Ayush Goel, Osheen Sachdev

Fraudulent transactions predictions in bitcoin network

Blog: https://medium.com/ml45/fraudulent-transaction-prediction-in-bitcoin-network-e5e1d08d5d8d

Students: Bhavay Aggarwal, Saad Ahmad, Prasham Narayan

ICU Admission Prediction for covid patients using clinical data

Blog: https://medium.com/applications-of-machine-learning/predicting-icu-admission-of-confirmed-covid-19-patients-using-machine-learning-algorithm-4a4f41e21d8b

Students: Hemant Dhankar, Nitesh, Bhaskar

Multi-modal Music Emotion Recognition

Blog: https://khushalii.medium.com/multi-modal-music-emotion-recognition-6b8f358d9c3

Students: Khushali Verma, Dipanshu Aggarwal, Aditya Garg

Multi-modal prediction of adoptability of pets

Blog: https://medium.com/@anunay1605/multi-modal-prediction-of-adoptability-of-pets-4480c182352

Students: Rahul Kukreja, Anunay Yadav, and Ansh Kumar Sharma

What A Phish: Phishing website detection

Blog: https://vibhu18116.medium.com/whataphish-detecting-phishing-websites-e5e1f14ef1a9

Students: Himanshi Mathur, Vanshika Goel, Vibhu Agrawal

First Public Funding for Research at IIIT-Delhi

Excited to share that I received my first public funding at IIIT-Delhi by Science and Engineering Research Board under the Start-up Research Grant scheme. The funding is approved for my project titled “Robot-Assisted Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder”. This funding will enable me to develop the robot-assisted diagnosis for children of Indian ethnicity. This is one of my dream projects through which I want to contribute in democratizing the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Together with my PhD student Ashwini, we have already started working on the problem and soon NAO will also join our lab as a new member to assist us. Collaborations from researchers and medical practitioners in the field are most welcome!

Inception of HMI Lab at IIIT-Delhi

This was long due! Finally, I am glad to announce the inception of my research group named Human-Machine Interaction a.k.a HMI at IIIT-Delhi. The focus of HMI lab is on the investigation of novel interaction mechanisms to empower human-machine cooperation. HMI lab aims to provide a unique facility for talented individuals, including computer scientists, designers, and philosophers coming from Ph.D., master as well as undergraduate levels. Please feel free to explore the lab’s website at https://hmi.iiitd.edu.in/

Openings for one Ph.D. candidate and two Research Assistant

 

Post	One Full-Time Ph.D. Student Two Research Associates
Research Area	The Ph.D. student will be primarily responsible for the analysis of collected physiological data signals (Electroencephalography: EEG, Galvanic Skin Response: GSR, Photoplethysmogram: PPG, Electrocardiography: ECG, Electromyography: EMG), report generation, and coordination of the project. In addition, he/she will also be responsible for the scientific manuscript dissemination in relation to the work.   Two RA’s will be responsible for the data collection at IDTR, New Delhi. Post data collection, both the RA’s will assist the Ph.D. student in the analysis of the data.  One RA will work on analyzing the vehicle’s data (accelerometer, brake, etc.) in relation to the video/NIR camera feed.  Other RA will perform psychometric analysis in collaboration with the researchers involved from AIIMS and IIIT-D.
Fellowship	Ph.D. Student: Rs.31,000 + HRA (as applicable) for one year + contingency + travel Grant  RAs: 20,000 (all-inclusive) for 8-12 months.
Essential Qualifications	For both Ph.D. and RA students: M.Tech / M.S. / M.E. in CS / IT / ECE / EE or allied areas or M.Sc. in Cognitive Science or allied areas and B.Tech / B.S. / B.E. in CS / IT / ECE / EE or allied areas, and CGPA at least 7.5 on a scale of 10 or at least 70% (or equivalent) in the graduation and the post-graduation degree.
Desirable Experience	Ph.D. Student:  1 – 2 years of research experience in signal processing and machine learning.  A publication in the relevant area in an international journal/conference of repute. Strong background in python and/or Matlab programming. Team spirit and ability to work independently. Excellent communication skills, flexibility, and creativity. RAs: Knowledge of signal processing and/or computer vision (RA1).  Knowledge about psychometric analysis and statistical methods (RA2). Advanced experience with C++/Python and/or Matlab, reusable code and software documentation (RA1 and RA2).
Application Deadline	26.04.2020

For application please send an e-mail to (jainendra(at)iiitd(dot)ac(dot)in) with Subject as: Application for Ph.D./RA on “Driver’s Cognitive State Monitoring”. Please attach your updated CV. Ph.D. applicants also need to provide a 2-page research statement on “Cognitive State Monitoring using Physiological Signals”.

 

Visit by Dr. Andreagiovanni Reina

Dr. Andreagiovanni Reina (Research Fellow in Collective Robotics – University of Sheffield, UK) visited us for a seminar on January 23, 2020. In his lecture on “Collective Decision Making: From Bees to Robots via Multiscale Modelling”, he highlighted how the collective systems are inherently difficult to analyze and how his research is using multiscale modeling, to analyze the systems at various levels of complexity and detail, from macroscopic group-level dynamics to microscopic individual-level behavior, and from noise-free deterministic models to stochastic spatial descriptions. It was a very insightful talk and definitely can be very helpful in group human-robot interaction. More information about him and his research can be found at http://areina.staff.shef.ac.uk.

Visit by Prof. Domènec Puig

Prof. Domènec Puig recently visited us from URV, Spain between December 29, 2019 – January 5, 2020.  Prof. Puig was my Ph.D. supervisor and is currently Vice-Rector of the URV, Spain for Academic Policy.  During his visit, Prof. Puig interacted with our director  Prof. Ranjan Bose and Dean (Academics) Prof. Anubha Gupta for exploring research and academic collaboration opportunities at the institute level. He also gave a talk on “Efficient Artificial Intelligent Models and their Applications to Healthcare Informatics”.  We also discussed the funding opportunities between Indian and the EU and agreed to create an Indo-EU consortium for seeking funding from the EU on capacity building in robotics and autonomous systems in India. It was a pleasure hosting him and his wife at IIIT-Delhi. His visit reminded me of my beautiful days during my Ph.D. in Spain. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration again with Prof. Puig, this time in a different role 🙂

Invited Talk at Center of Intelligent Robotics, IIIT-Allahabad

IIIT-Allahabad held an inauguration ceremony on January 2, 2020, to mark the launch of the Center of Intelligent Robotics, in which I was also invited as a keynote speaker. I delivered a talk on “Emotion recognition using Physiological Signals and Machine Learning”. The talk was scheduled in a room, where I used to attend classes during my graduation at IIIT-Allahabad and hence I felt honored to stand on the other side of the mic in the same class. Several enthusiastic students attended the talk, from and outside IIIT-Allahabad. I would love to see these students take a career in Robotics in their future.

Visit to the University of Cape Town

My colleague Anuj and I recently visited UCT, Cape Town on November 21, 2019, for exploring potential collaboration opportunities between UCT and IIIT-Delhi. We had wonderful interactions with faculty members from the Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical Engineering, including James Gain, Patrick Marais, Amit Mishra, and Fred Nicolls. We talked about research interests of IIIT-Delhi and realized that UCT and IIIT-Delhi share similar interests in several areas including, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Virtual Reality, HCI, Communications, etc. We also had a meeting with Carol Ojwang, Acting Co-Director (Internationalisation) at UCT. We discussed strong possibility of collaboration in terms of joint Ph.D. and semester abroad programs. Thanks a lot to everyone at UCT for the kind hospitality during our visit and we look forward to a long and enriching relationship between UCT and IIIT-Delhi.