Penn State, Indian Institute of Science award joint research seed grants

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Penn State and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have announced the awardees for the 2024-25 cycle of their collaboration program. These awardees comprise four joint projects that connect Penn State and IISc researchers. The selected projects combine the unique expertise of each partnering institution to address global challenges or matters of bilateral importance to India and the United States.

The program, spearheaded by Penn State Global and the Office of International Relations at IISc, has offered interdisciplinary seed grant funding to foster collaborative, sustainable, and self-supporting research and education programs. Launched in April, the program received 27 joint project proposals in May.

"I am delighted that faculty at Penn State and IISc are very eager to engage in research collaboration and that this emerging strategic partnership is quickly gaining momentum," said Sabine Klahr, interim vice provost for Penn State Global. "This demonstrates that dedicating resources strategically at both partner institutions to grow collaborations is effective, ultimately leading to a long-term, multi-disciplinary partnership that amplifies each university's strengths and yields transformative outcomes."

Utilizing complementary skillsets and cross-disciplinary efforts, the funding supports collaborative work covering diverse and broad topics, such as sensing and communications with reflective intelligent surfaces, democratization of genome assembly, large-scale distributed learning for democratizing future artificial intelligence (AI), and pesticide transport by means of a vortex ring. The research projects, resulting from a series of workshops and the seed grant program, aim to establish long-term, multi-layered engagement between Penn State and IISc.

The 2024 Penn State-IISc awarded projects are:

• Paul Medvedev, professor of computer science and engineering, and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, and Chirag Jain, assistant professor of computational and data science at IISc: "Democratization of Genome Assembly"
  • The project proposes to design novel algorithms and user-friendly software tools to help reduce computational costs through innovative data reduction algorithms, reduce financial costs by minimizing the amount of needed sequencing data and reduce manpower costs by automating the annotation of complete genomes, which typically requires vast resources. Applying a wide range of big data techniques to achieve these improvements, including machine learning, graph theory and combinatorial optimization, the project aims to open the door for researchers and clinicians and many downstream applications, including in biomedical, agricultural and basic biology, such as rare disease treatments, precision medicine, cancer treatment, agriculture and environmental conservation.
• Ting He, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State, and Parimal Parag, associate professor of electrical communication engineering at IISc: "Large-scale Distributed Learning for Democratizing Future AI"
  • The proposed project focuses on using distributed computing techniques - developing frameworks, algorithms and tools - to lower the resource barrier in adopting large-scale machine learning models. The short-term goal is to develop knowledge and expertise in state-of-the-art distributed training and inferencing technologies and conduct controlled experiments, and the long-term goal to be continued past the duration of this seed project is to contribute original techniques to improve the state of the art and conduct field experiments in an open network environment, such as the cloud. The project will specifically examine model parallel inferencing by large language models, and involves a Schreyer scholar selected for the project at Penn State. Meanwhile, a comprehensive survey of existing technologies for parallel machine learning, which will cover a range of topics including data parallelism, model parallelism and pipelining, with focus on model training is taking place at IISc.
• Ram Narayanan, professor of electrical engineering, and Michael Lanagan, professor of engineering science and mechanics, at Penn State, and KJ Vinoy, professor of electrical communication engineering (ECE), and Sundeep Prabhakar Chepuri, assistant professor of ECE at IISc: "Sensing and Communications with Reflective Intelligent Surfaces"
  • The proposed concept to be developed leverages a novel combination of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and advanced signal processing techniques to create a powerful 2D imaging system with a single-antenna transceiver, particularly in the radio frequency (RF) range, such as microwave or THz. Unlike traditional imaging systems, where an array of antennas or sensors is used, this system relies on just a single antenna. Each RIS can dynamically manipulate the incident wavefronts by applying different phase shifts, creating various spatial coding patterns or "coded beams." The measured signals are then processed using compressive sensing techniques. The system essentially functions as a "single-pixel camera," but in the RF domain. Expected benefits include cost-effectiveness, lower data acquisition requirements and scalability to other frequency ranges. In addition to faculty and student visits supported by both universities, Penn State is also providing support to three Schreyer Honors College undergraduate students to participate in the research and visit IISc as part of their technical and global education.
• Shreyash Gulati, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State Altoona, and M.S. Bobji, professor of mechanical engineering at IISc: "Pesticide Transport by Means of a Vortex Ring"
  • Agriculture plays an important role in the Indian and the U.S. economies. Traditional spraying methods that are used for the application of pesticides on the crops lead to wastage of pesticides which poses health risks and environmental hazards. The project aims to study the controlled application of a pesticide puff on the crop by using a vortex ring. Besides providing proof of concept, this project aims to also help discover key preliminary insights into the physics behind the travel of a puff of microdroplets riding on a vortex ring. Moreover, this project will help in developing drone-based AI solutions for precision application of pesticides locally in the infected part of the field rather than blanket spraying. Researchers recruit a Schreyer Scholar to contribute to the project and travel to IISc in the summer of 2025.

"The quality and quantity of seed applications spoke volumes of the synergistic ideas between Penn State and IISc," said Anna Marshall, associate director for Asia partnerships at Penn State Global. "The ongoing, multidisciplinary research collaborations demonstrate the shared vision of both universities in building robust and sustainable engagement to tackle global challenges or matters of bilateral significance to India and the U.S."

For more information on the IISc partnership, contact Marshall at [email protected].

About the Indian Institute of Science

Established in 1909, the Indian Institute of Science is a leading public research university nestled in the technology heartland of Bangalore, India, which is known for its substantial contributions to science, engineering and management research. This strategic location in a city renowned as the "Silicon Valley of India" optimizes the university's role in bridging ancient cultural heritage with modern technological advancements.