Bhubaneswar, December 16: Renowned national and international AI experts will be converging at SOA Deemed to be University here on December 18 to participate in a one-day Odisha AI Symposium 2025 which is being organised with the objective of advancing the recently approved Odisha AI Policy and provide strategic direction to boost the state’s AI-driven growth.
The event, being organised by SOA in collaboration with the Odisha Society of America (OSA) and AI and HPC Centre of IIT Bhubaneswar, will bring together eminent policymakers, industry leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and key ecosystem enablers on a single platform to discuss as to how AI could be used in different sectors including healthcare and agriculture, Prof. Pradipta Kumar Nanda, Vice-Chancellor of SOA, told newspersons on Tuesday.
The symposium will feature keynote sessions by leading AI experts from India and abroad, thematic panel discussions with academia, industry and policy think tanks and facilitate direct engagement with researchers, innovators, startups, corporates and policymakers, Prof. Nanda said.
Prof. Chitta Baral, Professor of Computer Science at Arizona State University, USA and Prof. Ashwini Kumar Nanda, Center Director, AI and HPC Research Center, IIT Bhubaneswar, Prof. Abani Patra, Center-Director for Data Science and Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tufts Institute for AI, USA, Prof. Manas Kumar Mallick, Director, SOA, Prof. S. Samantaray, IIT Bhubaneswar and Prof. Renu Sharma, Additional Dean, Student Affairs, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, SOA, were present at the news conference.
As a landmark initiative ahead of Odisha’s large-scale AI mission, the symposium is designed to foster strategic collaborations, deep-tech solutions and a future-ready roadmap for scalable and sustainable AI adoption, Vice-Chancellor Prof. Nanda said adding there was immense scope for use of AI in improving healthcare.
The focus areas of the symposium will include AI in education and skilling, AI in healthcare, AI in agriculture, AI in AI ethics, and AI in security, Prof. Baral said, adding “we will discuss what needs to be done to make Odisha lead in this field.”
The symposium will also have a session on Agentic AI, which is an advanced form of AI where software agents plan, reason, and act across systems on their own to achieve complex goals with minimal human intervention. The session has been titled ‘Beyond the Prompt: Decoding Google’s Agentic AI.”
The symposium will also be an official pre-event for the India AI Impact Summit 2026, and SOA will be the host institution in partnership with Indian AI Mission (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India).
The Odisha Society of America (OSA), one of the oldest and most influential global organizations representing Odias worldwide, will be bringing its strong diaspora network, commitment to technological advancement and community empowerment to the symposium. Its involvement will add global outreach, diverse expertise, and a reinforced mission to position Odisha as a frontrunner in AI-led innovation. The AI and HPC Research Center (AHRC) is an interdisciplinary and collaborative research center at the IIT Bhubaneswar, which was established in May 2023. It focuses on advancing applied research, innovation and high-performance computing solutions to drive technology-enabled growth and societal transformation across Odisha and beyond.
