Week-long innovation showcase at CSIR lab from July 10

Fourth Paradigm Institute, a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, will organise a six-day showcase of its innovations as part of a national campaign, from July 10 to 15.

CSIR-4PI which promotes data-driven translational research in CSIR labs will join CSIR’s countrywide campaign, ‘One Week One Lab’ (OWOL), where labs under the council showcase technological breakthroughs and innovations.

Sridevi Jade, head, CSIR-4PI, told reporters on Monday that the OWOL programme at the institute will have a curtain-raiser on June 21 when a centralised supercomputing facility will be inaugurated by CSIR Director-General N Kalaiselvi. The facility is expected to cater to the traditional and AI computational needs of CSIR labs, with an enhanced total peak performance of 4.2 petaFLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second).

The OWOL campaign at CSIR-4PI will culminate with celebrations of the institute’s foundation day, on July 15.

CSIR-4PI, since its inception in 2013, has been working in domains including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and cyberinfrastructure. The research activities at the institute are grouped under two divisions -- Earth and Engineering Sciences and Data Science and Supercomputing.

The institute will engage with school and college students as part of a scientist-student connect. The campaign will feature interactions involving stakeholders including the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority and academia-industry panel discussions.

Agrotech project

CSIR-4PI is working on a project to develop smart agrotechnologies to enhance soil and plant health, Jade said. “The programme focuses on crop-specific, region-specific requirements of the farmers and features including targeted spraying of pesticides are being explored,” she said.

Complementing this flagship programme, farmers from different parts of Karnataka will visit the laboratory during an ‘open day’ event under OWOL. The engagement is expected to help the farmers use customised technologies for better yields.

Anil Kumar, chief scientist, said the institute is also looking at possibilities of incubating a startup in the cybersecurity domain that can work on strategic features including threat intelligence.