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LTRC: Celebrating 25 Years in Language Research
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.
Initially focused on areas like Machine Translation, Semantic Parsing, and Information Extraction, the centre has expanded its research portfolio to include Speech Recognition, Text Generation, Sentiment Analysis, Dialogue Systems, and more. Over the years, LTRC has built a thriving ecosystem of researchers, students, and collaborators who have carried forward the centre’s pioneering work in various directions, many of which had their origins at LTRC itself.
Today, the centre embodies the spirit of IIITH’s logo — a mighty banyan tree — with its deep roots in research and far-reaching impact.
LTRC offers a range of academic programmes in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics (CL), from undergraduate to doctoral levels. Its B.Tech. courses prepare students for engineering careers, while the Dual Degree and MS by Research programmes focus on nurturing future researchers.
PhD Scholars
Masters degrees
Dual degrees
(B.Tech + Masters)
Being an applied centre, right from the start, LTRC focused on translating research ideas into systems, tools, and resources, and strove to make them publicly available whenever possible. A lot of this has been possible through work that has come out of major funded projects undertaken over the years. The stakeholders have been varied: from government and defence organizations to industry partners as well as academic partners.
Time (IST)
Topic
Speaker
09:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Inaugural Session
Welcome by Prof. Radhika Mamidi
Address by
Prof. P. J. Narayanan,
Director, IIIT-H
LTRC's 25 Years journey: By
Prof. Dipti Misra Sharma,
Prof. Rajeev Sangal,
Prof. Yegnanarayana,
Prof. Vasudeva Varma
Felicitating
Prof. Vineet Chaitanya by
Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya and
Prof. Amba Kulkarni, UoH
Address by Chief Guest: Prof. Raj Reddy, Former Chairman, IIITH and Professor at CMU
Address by Guest of Honour:
Shri. Jayesh Ranjan,
Chief Secretary, ITE&C Dept, Govt of Telangana
Keynote talk on Evolution of Language Processing: From glass box to black box.
Dr. Srinivas Bangalore, Interactions, LLC
01:00 PM - 02:00 PM: Lunch Break
02:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Talk on Generative AI, Linguistics and Indian Language NLP: A 25 Year Journey
Prof. Monojit Choudhury, MBZUAI
02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Panel Discussion on Language technologies for social good
Prof. AG Ramakrishnan, IISc
Prof. Umamaheshwar Rao, UoH
Prof. Makarand Tapaswi, IIIT-Hyderabad &
Wadhwani AI
Prof. Prakash Yalla, IIIT-Hyderabad
Moderated by
Prof. Ramesh Loganathan,
IIIT-H
03:30 PM - 04:15 PM: Tea Break + Poster Session
04:15 PM - 04:30 PM
Talk on Universal Semantic Grammar
Dr. Soma Paul, IIIT-H
Prof. Sukadha, IIT-BHU
04:30 PM - 05:30 PM
Panel Discussion on Multimodality
Prof. Bapi Raju, IIIT-H
Prof. Siva Reddy, McGill University
(Virtual)
Dr. Khyathi Chandu, Mistral (Virtual)
Dr. Balaji Srinivasan, Adobe Research India
Moderated by
Prof. Vineet Gandhi, IIIT-H
05:30 PM - 06:30 PM: Current LTRC students and Alumni connect
06:35 PM
Folk Dance Performance
Lahari Yarra
06:40 PM
Classical Dance Performance
Ketaki Shetye
06:50 PM
Rabindra Sangeet
Anuska Maity, Anindita Mondal and Soumit Roy
07:00 PM
Flute Recital
Alimpan Modak
07:15 PM
Hindustanti classical vocal performance
Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya (leading NLP researcher and CS professor at IIT Bombay) accompanied by IIITH research scholars Alimpan Modak on tabla and Anuska Maity on harmonium.
Time (IST)
Topic
Speaker
09:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Reflection talks
One decade of life at LTRC
LTRC: Recollections of a Researcher
Dr. Sriram Venkatapathy, Amazon (Virtual)
Dr. SP Kishore, Apple (Virtual)
10:00 AM - 10:20 AM
Talk on Genesis and Vision of Bhashini and its current progress
Prof. K. VijayRaghavan, Former PSA (Virtual)
10:20 AM - 11:00 AM
Talk on Overcoming LLM Limitations with Agentic Workflow
Talk on AIM: A Framework for Identifying High-ROI AI Use Cases
Mr. Harshit Surana, Ai2 Seattle
Mr. Anuj Gupta, Gradient Advisors
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Tea Break
11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Talk on Generative AI landscape in India
Prof. Mitesh Khapra, IITM & AI4Bharat
(Virtual)
Prof. Ravikiran S, IIITH & BharatGPT
12:15 PM - 12:45 PM
Talk on NLP at scale for Indian languages
Dr. Anoop Kunchukuttan, Microsoft
12:45 PM - 01:30 PM
Panel discussion on Linguistics in the era of LLMs
Prof. Josef Van Genabith, DFKI (Virtual)
Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, IIT Bombay
Prof. Dipti Misra Sharma, IIIT-Hyderabad
Prof. Monojit Choudhury, MBZUAI
Dr. Sowmya Vajjala, NRC, Canada
(Virtual)
Moderated by
Dr. Rajeev Sangal, IIIT-H
01:30 PM - 02:30 PM: Lunch Break
02:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Talk on Improving Software Productivity by Combining LLMs with Static Program Analysis
Dr. Sriram Rajamani, Microsoft
03:15 PM - 04:00 PM
Industry Panel discussion on Future directions for NLP at industrial scale
Dr. Sandipan Dandapat, Microsoft
Dr. Shirish Karande, TCS
Dr. Manish Gupta, Microsoft
Dr. Niyati Chhaya, Hyperbots Inc
Moderated by
Dr. Vasudeva Varma, IIIT-H
04:00 PM - 04:15 PM: Tea Break
04:15 PM - 05:00pm
Panel discussion on Past perfect, Future tense
LTRC alumni
Dr. Prasad Pingali, Borderfree Financial
Dr. Mounika Marreddy,
Postdoc, University of Bonn
Dr. Sai Ganesh, Sony Research India
Ms. Divya Sai Jitta, Shell
Mr. Bhavyajeet Singh, Microsoft
Moderated by
Dr. Radhika Mamidi, IIIT-H
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Closing Session
Felicitations + Vote of Thanks
05:30 PM - 07:00 PM: High Tea
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