Abstract: Indian population is touching 1.5 billion -- almost a fifth of the world's population with a median age of 28.8 years. Such young population implies youth dividend provided the young minds can be directed towards economically productive endeavor and for the betterment of the society. Unfortunately, number of engineering seats in Indian colleges is approximately 1.4 million, of which about not even 10% of the seats are in quality institutions where the students can obtain education from faculty with real world technology development experience and exposure. As a result, anecdotally, it has been said that 90% of the students are unemployable. Under such circumstances, the youth dividend that India is supposed to benefit from is slipping away. While online education where the content delivery may be from top level experts can mitigate this problem to an extent, but unless the online programs are properly designed and crafted, and is supported with extensive hands-on experience, even the best content is not going to produce desirable results. In this context, in 2020, we started our first six-month long online certification program in Cyber Security and ran it for 5 years, in 10 consecutive cohorts, each cohort consisting of 50-60 professionals who were at various stages of their career but were engaged in IT field. In 2021, we also initiated another online program in Blockchain technology which had a different delivery model and ran for more than 20 cohorts. Another program on Red-Teaming skills -- a 6 month long certification program was also attempted for several cohorts -- to be replaced by a professional cyber security program for 7 month duration. We also ran a few online courses in blockchain and cyber security through the NPTEL platform. In this talk, not only we will focus on the experiences of delivery, outcome, and learning but also compare the various online models we have tried and what worked and what failed to produce desired results. We believe that for India's youth dividend to be realized, online education with properly designed content, delivery and off-line support mechanism would be the only option, and we believe that our learning may provide inputs to such a plan.
Speaker Bio: Prof. Sandeep Shukla is currently a Professor and Director of IIIT Hyderabad. Before joining IIIT Hyderabad, he was Rajiv and Ritu Batra Chair Professor of Cyber Security at IIT Kanpur. He headed the department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur between 2017 and 2020 and served as the Poonam & Prabhu Goel Chair Professor from 2016 to 2019. He also acted as a joint coordinator of the National Interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security & Cyber Defense of Critical Infrastructures (C3i Center) at IIT Kanpur which he also founded and as a joint coordinator of the National Blockchain Project funded by the National Security Council Secretariat. He served as a project director of the C3i Hub a Technology Innovation Hub on Cyber Security created by the DST, Government of India until March 2025. In August 2025, he moved from IIT Kanpur to IIIT Hyderabad. He worked at GTE Labs as a Principal Member of Technical Staff, as Senior Staff Design Engineer at Intel Corporation, as research faculty at the University of California, Irvine, and as a Professor of Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA. His major research areas are cybersecurity, cyber-resilient system design, risk assessment, critical infrastructure security, and blockchain technology. Prof. Shukla had published over 300 peer-reviewed conference papers, journal articles, and book chapters, authored 12 books, and served as editor for several noted journals and technical publications.

Abstract: The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence necessitates a foundational shift in education: widespread AI literacy for all students, regardless of major. This talk addresses the critical educational challenge of democratizing AI and highlights how this initiative is inextricably linked to the evolution and accessibility of High-Performance Computing (HPC) resources. I will present the structure and core philosophy of our new Applied AI Minor, an interdisciplinary program designed to equip every graduate with practical AI fluency. The minor is anchored by the foundational course, CSDS 102: Artificial Intelligence for All Disciplines, which provides students from all fields with hands-on experience using existing AI/Machine Learning tools to solve problems across science, business, and the humanities, alongside integrated ethical discussions.
Speaker Bio: A veteran of High-Performance Computing and AI, Dr. Chaudhary is currently the Kevin J. Kranzusch Chair Professor and Chair of Computer and Data Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Previously, as Program Director at National Science Foundation, he co-led the National Strategic Computing Initiative and was in the working group of the Quantum Leap Initiative, National Quantum Initiative, National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, and the I-Corps Program. Dr. Chaudhary co-founded Scalable Informatics, a leading provider of analytics solutions. Previously, he was the CEO of Tata CRL, a global HPC cloud and solutions leader before selling it to Tata Consulting Services. Earlier, at Cradle Technologies, he developed multi-processor chips and software for media applications and served as Chief Architect at Corio Inc., which had a successful IPO in 2000.