An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, Anant Yardi, has gifted $10 million to his alma mater to create state-of-the-art laboratories and attract talented students and researchers to its newly established School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI).
Based in North America, Mr. Yardi is the founder of Yardi Systems which provides real estate asset and property management solutions.
He announced the funding on the eve of the institute’s 52nd convocation. He said, “Artificial Intelligence technologies are driving global transformations, and playing a pivotal role in industrial, social and environmental change. We look forward to the ScAI strengthening education and research in AI, Machine Learning and Data Science, to enable commercial and societal applications.”
AI to shape future
V. Ramgopal Rao, director, IIT-Delhi, said that in future, a nation’s progress would depend on its AI capability and the gift from Mr. Yardi will catalyse cutting-edge research in AI and related areas and propel not only ScAI and IIT-Delhi but also the country to become a leader in AI.
ScAI’s founding head Mausam said the new school needed financial aid to develop and support the growth of AI researchers in the country and to strengthen IIT-Delhi’s place on the global AI map and that the funding helped in this regard.
Mr. Yardi has an M.S. in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.Tech (Director’s Gold Medallist) from IIT-Delhi. Established in September 2020, the School of AI is IIT-Delhi’s sixth school.