CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE - Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

1. National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education (NCPRE)

Union Minister Pralhad Joshi Visits IIT Bombay’s Centres of Excellence in Renewable Energy

IIT Bombay welcomed Shri Pralhad Joshi, the Hon’ble Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, to its campus.

Prof. Shireesh Kedare, Director, IIT Bombay, received the Minister in the presence of Prof. Milind Atrey, Deputy Director (Academics, Research and Translation), along with senior Institute functionaries and officials.

During the visit, Shri Joshi interacted with investigators from NCPRE and members of its Advisory Committee. He also toured several of the Institute’s cutting-edge facilities, including the Perovskite Tandem Solar Cell Laboratory, the Silicon Fabrication Laboratory, and the Medium Voltage Laboratory.

The visit underscored IIT Bombay’s commitment to advancing research and innovation in the renewable energy space. With a strong ecosystem of faculty-led initiatives, cutting-edge laboratories, and translational research, the Institute continues to play a pivotal role in shaping India’s sustainable energy future. By fostering collaborations and pushing technological boundaries, IIT Bombay remains at the forefront of developing impactful, scalable solutions for the nation and beyond.

**********

The visit and the Institute’s strides in solar research attracted media attention, with stories spotlighting IIT Bombay’s leadership in photovoltaic innovation, recent technological breakthroughs, and the launch of a pilot production facility by an Institute-incubated startup.

2. SBI Foundation Hub

SBI Foundation Hub at IIT Bombay: Advancing AI for Banking and Finance

At the intersection of cutting-edge AI and India’s banking needs lies the SBI Foundation Hub for Data Science and Analytics at the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science (CMInDS), IIT Bombay. This collaborative research hub, backed by the SBI Foundation, is shaping the future of banking through innovative, real-world applications of artificial intelligence. By combining domain expertise from SBI with the deep research capabilities of IIT Bombay’s faculty and scholars, the Hub is delivering impactful solutions in areas such as generative AI, verifiable and safe AI systems, inclusive digital interfaces, and operational optimization. The work is not only practical and sector-specific but has also earned global academic recognition with papers accepted at leading international conferences.

Discover how the Hub’s ongoing research is pushing boundaries in AI and banking:

Research Theme 1: Generative AI for Banking

Project Title: Generative AI for Record Data Synthesis
Paper: Synthetic tabular data generation for imbalanced classification: The surprising effectiveness of an overlap class. AAAI Conference 2025.
D’souza, A., Swetha, M., & Sarawagi, S. (2025).
Preprint available on arXiv at: https://lnkd.in/d78RHmcK

Research Theme 2: Trustworthy AI for Safe and Sustainable Banking

Project Title: Towards trustworthy and verifiable AI for safety-critical systems
Paper: Sensitivity Verification for Additive Decision Tree Ensembles.
Arhaan Ahmad, Tanay Vineet Tayal, Ashutosh Gupta, S. Akshay (2025)
ICLR 2025. Link: https://lnkd.in/d5mU8QXt

Project Title: Towards trustworthy and verifiable AI for safety-critical systems
Paper: Certified policy verification and synthesis for MDPs under distributional reach-avoidance properties.
Akshay, S., Chatterjee, K., Meggendorfer, T., & Žikelić, Ð.
Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2024).
Link:https://lnkd.in/dApsSav6

Project Title: Towards trustworthy and verifiable AI for safety-critical systems
Paper: Monitoring Robustness and Individual Fairness
Ashutosh Gupta, Thomas A. Henzinger, Konstantin Kueffner, Kaushik Mallik, David Link: https://lnkd.in/dHXxW_tD

With a strong pipeline of research already making waves in global forums, the SBI Foundation Hub at IIT Bombay is poised to redefine the role of AI in shaping a more efficient, inclusive, and trustworthy banking ecosystem.