IIT Bhubaneswar Research and Entrepreneurship Park

Faculty and campus

The people who teach it, and the laboratory where it is verified

IIT Bhubaneswar faculty own the AI and computer-vision core and ratify every grade. Practising engineers and partner startups teach production. Both campus immersions take place at VARCoE, the Institute's immersive technology centre.

Faculty

IIT Bhubaneswar faculty

Dr. Debi Prosad Dogra

Associate Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Director, Research and Entrepreneurship Park

IIT Bhubaneswar

Dr. Dogra works on artificial intelligence and its applications in computer vision, visual surveillance, intelligent transportation systems and augmented reality. He holds a PhD from IIT Kharagpur and an M.Tech from IIT Kanpur.

Before joining IIT Bhubaneswar he led development at Samsung Research India in Noida and worked as a researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in South Korea. He is Treasurer of the IEEE Bhubaneswar Section and an editor of the journals SN Computer Science and the Journal of Multimedia Information System.

Research areas: Artificial intelligence · Computer vision and visual surveillance · Intelligent transportation systems · Augmented reality
In this programme: Anchors the AI and computer-vision core of the programme: machine-learning foundations, camera geometry, real-time perception and detection, and sits on the Demo Day jury.

Institute profile

Dr. Ram Prasad Padhy

Professor-in-Charge, Virtual and Augmented Reality Centre of Excellence (VARCoE)
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Sciences

IIT Bhubaneswar

Dr. Padhy leads VARCoE, the MeitY-backed immersive technology centre that hosts both campus immersions and the Demo Day jury. His research covers machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, robotic vision, multi-sensor fusion, multi-modal perception and visual surveillance.

He holds a PhD and a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from NIT Rourkela. Before IIT Bhubaneswar he was an Assistant Professor at IIITDM Kancheepuram, a Lead Research Engineer at Siemens Corporate Technology in Bengaluru, and a Senior Software Engineer at Samsung R&D Institute, Delhi.

Research areas: Computer vision · Robotic vision · Multi-sensor fusion and multi-modal perception · Deep learning
In this programme: Leads the spatial-AI strand: SLAM and scene understanding, on-device deployment and benchmarking, and hosts the two immersions at VARCoE.

Institute profile

A third IIT Bhubaneswar faculty member will be named before applications close. Faculty for each cohort are nominated by the Research and Entrepreneurship Park.

Teaching team

Industry engineers, startup founders and teaching assistants

Industry engineers

Practising AR/VR engineers own the production material: Unity and the XR SDKs, the asset pipeline, generative 3D, avatars, networking and product design. They run the code review clinics at both immersions and mentor project teams one-to-one.

Partner startup founders

Six partner startups each take one live class in the Startup Spotlight series, contribute project problem statements from their own roadmaps, name a mentor for the teams that take them up, sit on the Demo Day jury and run a joint hiring panel in Week 22.

Teaching assistants

One teaching assistant for every 25 participants, recruited from IIT Bhubaneswar M.Tech and PhD scholars and VARCoE startup engineers, and contracted for the full six months. They run every laboratory, grade every build task, hold office hours twice a week and supervise the immersion labs.

The laboratory

Virtual and Augmented Reality Centre of Excellence

VARCoE is IIT Bhubaneswar's centre for research, skill development and start-up incubation in immersive technology. It was established with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Software Technology Parks of India and the Government of Odisha, with philanthropic support from Subroto Bagchi and Susmita Bagchi, and is intended to serve as a national hub for next-generation immersive technologies.

For this programme the centre provides the laboratory for both immersion blocks, the capture and compute equipment, the venue and part of the jury for Demo Day, and the startup pool from which Spotlight partners and project problem statements are drawn. Shortlisted project teams are offered an incubation pitch at the end of the programme.

What the centre provides for the programme

Meta Quest 3 headsets
A 3D scanning and photogrammetry rig
GPU workstations for model training and Gaussian-splat processing
Supervised laboratory space for batches of participants

VARCoE at IIT Bhubaneswar

On campus

Two campus immersions

Immersion 1

The weekend after Week 12 (midpoint) · Two days

Headset onboarding and safety; deploying your Milestone 2 scene and Week 11 benchmark build to a Quest 3
Hand-tracking and passthrough mixed-reality laboratory; on-device benchmarking on Quest hardware
Photogrammetry and 3D scanning studio: each team captures the dataset it will process in Weeks 13 to 15, with a first Gaussian-splat run on lab GPU workstations
Industry code review clinic on Milestones 1 to 5; partner-startup product corner; VARCoE orientation

Assessed: On-campus practical evaluation 1: live headset deployment of Milestone 2 and the Week 11 benchmark

Immersion 2

Week 24 (end of programme) · Two days

Final project integration laboratory: headset and hardware testing, performance tuning, dry runs; industry code review of the final builds
Demo Day: evaluation by parallel industry juries, followed by an individual viva voce
Certification ceremony; incubation pitch to VARCoE for shortlisted teams; alumni network onboarding

Assessed: On-campus practical evaluation 2: final project jury evaluation and individual viva

Both immersions are mandatory. They are where the headsets, capture rig and GPU workstations are, where the industry code review clinics happen, where partner startups put their products in participants' hands, and where the jury sits. A participant who misses either block cannot be certified in that cohort.

Because the cohort is large, Immersion 1 runs in batches on consecutive weekends, with two teaching assistants per batch. Demo Day is held with all teams together. Lab dates are reserved with VARCoE before enrolment opens, and confirmed dates are shared at seat confirmation.

Travel and accommodation for the immersion blocks are arranged and paid for by the participant. Subsidised hostel accommodation is under discussion with the Institute; admissions will confirm before the first block.

The Institute

IIT Bhubaneswar

The Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar is an Institute of National Importance established in 2008, with its campus at Argul on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. The Research and Entrepreneurship Park (REP) is the Institute's section-8 company for industry collaboration, translational research and start-up incubation; it is the academic associate for this programme, nominating faculty, assuring academic quality, ratifying grades and issuing the certificate jointly with VARCoE.

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