•Dr. Paresh delivered an invited talk on "Deep Reinforcement Learning for MEC Enabled Non-Terrestrial Networks: Models, Applications and Challenges" at 48th Wireless World Research Forum's Plenary Session "Non-Terrestrial Networks", Abu Dhabhi, UAE, 7th-9th November 2022 https://wwrf.tii.ae/index.php

•Dr. Jay Dave delivered an invited talk on "A Dive in Machine Learning for Cyber Security" at a workshop on AI & ML Applications in Cyber Security organized by KMIT, Hyderabad and ACM Hyderabad Deccan Chapter on October 1st, 2022.

•Dr. Aneesh Sreevallabh Chivukula delivered an Invited Talk titled “Deep Learning and its Applications”, on July 27th, 2022 in the Distinguished Lecture Series on Advanced Computing DLSAC 2022-23, Quarter 2, organized by Department of Artificial Intelligence, Anurag University in technical collaboration with ACM Hyderabad Deccan Chapter and Centre of Excellence - AI ML, Osmania University (under RUSA 2.0).

•As part of the Faculty Seminar Series, Dr Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy presented a talk on 'The Interface of Neuroscience and Computer Science'. He gave an introduction to contemporary research in Neuroscience and Computational Neuroscience. He also spoke about how understanding the brain ought to involve ideas and tools from Computer Science

•Faculty Seminar Series: Talk 3: Dense Graph Mining Dr Apurba Das gave a talk on Dense Graph Mining on November 17th, 2021.
He spoke about how the Dense structures serve as important primitives in solving many real-world problems such as understanding similar entities in a social network, identifying frauds in a transaction network, finding similar proteins in Protein-Protein interaction networks, and so on.

•The third talk in the faculty seminar series was delivered by Dr Nikumani Choudhury on October 27th, 2021. The title of the talk was "DSME MAC issues in IEEE 802.15.4 based IoT networks".

•Faculty Seminar Series - Talk1: The CSA organized the first seminar of the Faculty Seminar Series on October 1st, 2021, by Dr Ayan Das on the topic "An Outline of Natural Language Processing"

•Session on career opportunities and career planning: The Computer Science Association (CSA) organized a Session on Career Opportunities and Career Planning on Sept 25th, 2021 by Dr Prashant Chintapalli, a BITSian and currently Assistant Professor, IIM, Bangalore.

•The Department of Computer Science organized a talk by BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus CSIS alumnus Mr. Abhijit Kane - the founder of the $2 Billion company, Postman - on the 30th of January 2021.

•Dr Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy delivered an Invited talk (online) on “Axiomatic theory for neural circuit”, in the Computational Neuroscience Seminar, organized by the University of Bristol, UK. November 2020.

•Dr Paresh Saxena delivered an Invited Talk on “Machine Learning for 5G/B5G Non-Terrestrial Networks”, organized by the IEEE Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM), 2020, Nov 2020.

•Prof. Chittaranjan Hota delivered an invited talk titled "IoT Code Tamper-proofing: Challenges and Solutions", 25th Sept 2020 at UGC-HRDC, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

•Dr Lov Kumar delivered an Invited Talk on “Ensemble Methods in AI”, in Online AICTE Training and Learning (ATAL) Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", organized by the National Institute of Technology, Warangal - 506004, Telangana, May 2020.

•Dr Dipanjan Chakraborty delivered an Invited Talk on “Experiences from a Mobile-Based Behaviour Change Campaign on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Rural India”, in the Interaction Design for Development, organized by IIT Bombay February, 2020.

•Dr Manik Gupta gave a session on “Celebrating Women in Computing” at the GRAD COHORT, a pan-India Workshop for Women in Computing, hosted by IIT Gandhinagar, during July 24th - 26th, 2020.

•Dr Manjanna B received the VGST Award for Research Publications (ARP) 2018-19 by the Government of Karnataka, Vision Group on Science and Technology (VGST) on Sept 12, 2019.

•Mr. Mandan Naresh, Ph.D. student of Dr. Paresh Saxena, has received the prestigious TCS Fellowship from the TCS Research Scholarship Program (RSP) for a period of four years starting from July 2019. The team will be working on using machine learning techniques for efficient video distribution over wireless networks.

•Dr. Suvadip Batabyal has been awarded the TUBITAK fellowship 2019, Govt. of Turkey, for visiting scientist position in the dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Sabanci University, Turkey.

•Prof.G Geethakumari gave an invited talk on “Cloud Computing Security” at the Workshop on “Virtualization and Cloud Computing” organized by the UGC – Human Resource Development Centre (UGC – HRDC), JNTUH on February 14, 2019.

•Dr. Anoop Kunchukuttan, Senior Applied Researcher, Microsoft AI and Research, gave a talk on “Machine Translation for Related Languages”, on Feb 7th, 2019. He discussed about Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) for related languages as well as about some of the useful and powerful extensions to the standard phrase-based SMT.

•Dr. Abhaya Nayak, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computing, Macquire University, Sydney, Australia visited the Dept during January 15 – 16, 2019. He gave a talk on Trust in Context”. The talk discussed about how Spohn’s Ordinal Conditional Functions, which are used to model belief dynamics, when appropriately adapted and interpreted, can be applied to fruitfully model the dynamics of trust.

•Dr. Jagadish Suryadevara, Global Product Architect, VOLVO Group (Construction Equipment), Sweden visited the Dept on January 2, 2019. He delivered a lecture on “Emerging Systems Landscape: From Connected Machines to Data Analytics”.

•Prof. Sakthi Balan, Associate Professor, LNMIIT, Jaipur, gave an invited talk on “Online Social Synchrony and its Application to Detect Events in Social Media”, on December 21st, 2018.

•Prof. G Geethakumari gave an invited talk on "Embedded System Security" at the Defense Electronics Research Lab (DLRL), DRDO, Hyderabad, on December 12th, 2018.

•Prof. G Geethakumari gave an invited talk on “Introduction to Cloud Forensics and its Challenges”, at the Training Programme for experts from BIMSTEC Countries) Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand , Nepal and Bhutan), on November 16th, 2018 at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad. The event was jointly organized by National Investigation Agency (NIA), Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India and CFSL, Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India.

•The Computer Science Association of BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus won the Best Technical Association for the year of 2017-2018. We congratulate the team and wish them success in all their future endeavours!

•Dr. Shailesh Kumar, Chief Data Scientist, Reliance Jio and Visiting Faculty, Indian School of Business, delivered an expert talk on “Evolution of AI Thinking for building Products of the Next Decade”, on 23rd October 2018. The talk was followed by a Hands-on session on “How to build AI Systems for unlimited scale”, by Mr.Shobhit Agarwal and Mr Prateek Srivastava, founders of Couture.ai and BITS Pilani graduates.

Newly Approved Projects

•Dr. Rajib Maiti // Title of the project: "Defend Internet of Things-based Cyber Espionage through Analysis of Encrypted or Unencrypted Network Traffic using Machine Learning" // Funding Agency: CRG SERB, DST // Total Project Outlay: Approx. 28 lakhs // Duration of the project: 3 years.

•Dr. Suvadip Batabyal // Title of the project: "QoE Optimized Multimedia Content Delivery through Caching in D2D underlay Networks" // Funding Agency: DST-SERB (CRG) // Total Project outlay: Atleast 14 lakhs (exact amount is not communicated by the agency) // Duration of the project: 3 years.

Sponsored Projects – (Ongoing)

•"Geometric Obnoxious Facility Location Optimization"; PI: Dr. Manjanna B; Funding Agency: TARE SERB, DST; Total Outlay: INR 18.3 lakhs; Duration: 3 years.

•"MASTIC: ML-Aided Secure SoC and Analytics"; PI: Dr. Paresh Saxena, Co-PIs : Dr. Rajib Maiti and Dr. Manik Gupta; Duration: 2 years, Total Outay: INR 67.3 lakhs.

•"Design, development and project management support for fwo Al-based dialogue systems (e.g. voice-based chatbot) in Indian language"; PI: Dr. Dipanjan Chakraborty; Funding Agency: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ); Total Outlay: INR 6,839,988; BITS' share: INR 8,96,000; Duration: 1 year.

•MUT-DROCO: Multipath Networking Test-bed for Drone Communications. Grant Amount: INR 16.6 Lacs. Funding Agency: Start-Up Research Grant by Science and Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India. Duration: 2020-2022. Type: Research Grant. (Chief Investigator: Dr Paresh Saxena).

•Network Coding for Multipath Transport. Grant Amount: INR 5.5 Lacs. Funding Agency: AnsuR Tech., Oslo, Norway. Duration: 2019-2020. Type: Industrial Consultancy. (Chief Investigator: Dr Paresh Saxena).

•Interpretation of Tuberculin Reaction Using Medical Photography and Computer Aided Diagnosis, Grant Amount: Rs. 9.94 lakhs, DST-SERB; Start up Research Grant, (Formerly known as Early Career Research Award), 2019 – 2021, (Chief Investigator: Dr Jabez Christopher).

Sponsored Projects – (Completed)

•. "Lightweight Code Self-verification for Internet of Things (IoT) Devices", under Indo-Dutch Joint Research Program for ICT funded by DeitY-NWO-Progress-Irdeto with a project outlay of 380, 000 Euros (INR 2.6 Crores) from July, 2015 to July, 2019. (Investigators: Prof. Chittaranjan Hota and Researchers from Vrije University, Amsterdam).

•"Design and Development of Digital Forensic Tools for Cloud IaaS", Grant amount: Rs 55 lakhs, funded by Ministry of Communication & Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of India, New Delhi, 2014 - 2017. (Chief Investigator: Prof G Geethakumari, Co-Investigator: Dr. Digambar Povar).

•Network Coding with Deterministic Coefficients. Grant Amount: INR 5.6 Lacs. Funding Agency: AnsuR Tech., Oslo, Norway. Duration: 2018-2019. Type: Industrial Consultancy. (Chief Investigator: Dr Paresh Saxena).