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LTRC: Celebrating 25 Years in Language Research

Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC)

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.

Academic 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.

Centre’s Academic Achievement

50+

PhD Scholars

100+

Masters degrees

226+

Dual degrees
(B.Tech + Masters)

Research

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.

Speakers

Raj Reddy

Jayesh Ranjan

P. J. Narayanan

Rajeev Sangal

Vasudeva Varma

Dipti Misra Sharma

Bayya Yegnanarayana

Radhika Mamidi

Srinivas Bangalore

Anoop Kunchukuttan

A.G Ramakrishanan

Umamaheshwar Rao

Makarand Tapaswi

Prakash Yalla

Ramesh Loganathan

Soma Paul

Sukadha

Bapi Raju

Siva Reddy

Khyathi Chandu

Balaji Srinivasan

Vineet Gandhi

Sriram Venkatapathy

SP Kishore

Harshit Surana

Anuj Gupta

Mitesh Khapra

Ravi Kiran S

Monojit Choudhury

Josef Van Genabith

Pushpak Bhattacharyya

Sowmya Vajjala

Sriram Rajamani

Sandipan Dandapat

Shirish Karande

Manish Gupta

Niyati Chhaya

Prasad Pingali

Mounika Marreddy

Sai Ganesh

Divya Sai Jitta

Bhavyajeet Singh

Schedule

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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