Mphasis, an IT services and solutions provider specialising in cloud and cognitive services, inaugurated a first of its kind Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Cognitive Computing in collaboration with International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B). The CoE will leverage cognitive computing technology to solve problems related to education, enterprises, and accessibility. Through this pioneering initiative, the Centre aims to co-create open source IP assets on applied research with relevance to societal and enterprise challenges. The company announced that it will invest more than Rs 50 million over the next three years towards the initiative.
In an effort to use technology and its pervasiveness to address challenges faced by the social and enterprise sectors, Mphasis is collaborating with academia to leverage cognitive technology to co-create a new approach towards a joint solution delivery.
Technologies like accurate speech recognition, machine translation, video analytics, and video synthesis have become a reality due to cognitive science. These have the potential to enable disruptive solutions in Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs’), a key focus area of the CoE. The Centre has initiated a project related to Accessibility in order to develop algorithms that will help real-time synthesis of Indian sign language. This can be revolutionary in enabling the hearing-impaired community to communicate effectively with the hearing community, considerably improving their quality of life and interaction with society. For a country with only 250 certified sign language interpreters translating for a population with hearing impairment ranging from 1.8 million to 7 million, this can be a boon.
“Technology-based innovations have the potential to transform lives of people at scale and positively affect development outcomes. Mphasis’ CSR initiatives have always focused on supporting innovative technology-based projects with high impact potential. We firmly believe that the research outputs from the CoE for Cognitive Computing will have wide applicability and benefits for several problems faced by the society across multiple sectors. These innovations have the potential to bridge the divide between digital haves and have-nots, improving the prospects and quality of lives of millions,” said Srikanth Karra, Chief Human Resources Officer, Mphasis.
Another aspect that the Centre will focus on is to use cognitive computing to solve challenges faced by enterprises. A project under this category that focuses on enabling information convergence for real-time intelligence on social issues is underway. Similar to how mobile phones made media convergence possible, Information convergence is focused on deriving intelligent insights from information scattered across heterogeneous data sources. For example, tracking a criminal activity such as trafficking across the entire spectrum of digital footprint (across social media, police criminal records, call records, for example) will be invaluable in stitching together the whole trail of questionable actions.
Commenting on the partnership, Sundar Subramanian, President - Global Delivery, Mphasis, said, “Cognitive computing is one of the major pillars on which tomorrow's enterprises are being built. As these technologies become all pervasive, enterprises will explore newer business models to develop innovative solutions and services that are better aligned to the market needs. As a technology company solving challenges faced by enterprises, we strongly believe that our partnership with IIIT-B will help create research assets that will further the cause of technological evolution and adoption in the social sector.”
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