Mehta Family School of
Data Science & Artificial Intelligence

The Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta Family Foundation, based in Houston, Texas, USA, was established by Nisha, Rahul, Jainesh and his wife Mamta, and Dharmesh and his wife Archana to honor their parents, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta, from Mumbai, India. Bhupat and Jyoti instilled in their children the importance of education in improving outcomes for individuals and society. For more than 20 years, the Foundation has supported worldwide quality-of-life initiatives and funded more than 100 organizations that advance access to healthcare and education.

The Foundation’s primary philanthropic focus is to expand new talent in India. Its mission is to create intellectual talent through global academic collaboration. To accomplish this, the Foundation is supporting the development of new bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs at Indian academic institutions by connecting renowned international faculty with faculty at the Indian institutions. In keeping with its vision of creating opportunities for students in emerging scientific fields, the Foundation has funded more than five new schools in India in critical areas such as bioscience, engineering in medicine, data science, and artificial intelligence. Through these and other collaborative efforts, the Foundation seeks to elevate the students of India’s academic institutions to new levels of excellence, generating a well-educated and highly skilled workforce that will drive innovation, propel economic growth, and position India as a global technology leader now and into the future.”

The Partnership Between IIT Palakkad and MFF

The partnership with the foundation provides impetus to the research and education in DS and AI at IIT Palakkad enabling it to become a leading academic, research, and technology hub in these areas. The Foundation intends to support the new school for establishing faculty chairs, promoting research collaboration and exchanges between the school faculty and students and the Mehta Family Foundation Collaborative for Academic and Research Excellence faculty and other international partners, organizing and conducting international conferences at IIT Palakkad, organizing online/in person research seminars, and importantly establishing a state-of-the-art physical infrastructure to meet the growing academic and research needs of the school faculty and students for the next couple of decades.