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Knowledge City aims to set up five centres of excellence

Thiruvananthapuram: The IT department has begun discussion with CISCO and EY, leading global firms in cybersecurity, to join the centre of excellence (CoE) in cybersecurity at the proposed Knowledge City .

Knowledge City, spread across 100 acres, aims to set up CoEs in five verticals such as cybersecurity, big data & internet of things, cognitive computing & AI, blockchain &fintech, augmented & virtual reality.

The IT department has already conducted discussions with top firms and global universities to partner them in this project.

A space park, to be constructed by Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd for VSSC, too will come up on the 20-acre campus. The focus will be on startup developing technology for space science.

As per the plan, each vertical will have three major components such as an anchor firm, research wing of a university and a startup firm. The anchor firm will be a major IT firm which could feed ideas on the requirements in the industry, prototypes that could be made by startups with proper guidance from universities.

Already, Kerala has partnered with Unity Technologies to launch CoE in AR&VR. Automotive giant Nissan is another firm which will partner up to set up a CoE in AI. Tata Elxsi will set up an R&D centre in five acres while there are talks of Deakin University being part of the discussions for CoE in cybersecurity.

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K), an autonomous educational institution in technology that is functioning at Technopark campus, will soon shift to Technocity. The IT department is gearing up to develop IIITM-K as a deemed university for emerging technologies to accelerate the growth of Knowledge City.

IT secretary M Sivasankar said that with the setting up of CoEs in futuristic technologies, Kerala will be able to generate a large volume of talent and attract major IT firms. “CoE will have major impacts on enriching the startup ecosystem, ensuring a steady supply of skilled employees and maintain industry within state,” he said.

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