The
Vikram Sodhi Centre of Excellence for AI-Enabled Geological and Mining Systems at IIT Kharagpur reflects a bold vision to advance India's mining sector through cutting-edge research, innovation, and strong partnerships with industry, government, and leading national and international research institutions. Established as a Centre of Excellence (CoE) from its inception, it is committed to delivering impactful research, industrial relevance, and academic excellence.
The CoE focuses on developing AI-enabled solutions for mineral exploration by integrating multi-source geoscientific data, embedding geological mineralisation models, leveraging analogue deposit data, and creating repeatable workflows for generating drill-ready exploration targets. Its research spans terrestrial and deep-sea mining, with special emphasis on critical minerals such as lithium, copper, antimony, rare earth elements (REEs), and other strategic resources.
Building on IIT Kharagpur's long-standing strengths in Geology, Geophysics, Mining Engineering, Metallurgy, Computer Science combined with its capabilities in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, the CoE provides a unique interdisciplinary platform for research, consultancy, innovation, and capacity building. It also aims to promote internships, advanced research, executive education, certificate programmes, and future academic programmes in AI-enabled Mining Systems and study of Critical Minerals.
The CoE warmly welcomes
students, researchers, faculty members, industry leaders, policymakers, government agencies, and inter-/national collaborators to join this transformative initiative. Through collective expertise and shared commitment, we aspire to build a vibrant ecosystem that drives scientific excellence, technological innovation, sustainable resource development and strategic capability for the future of mining geology using AI technology. This will lead to resource optimization, both in terms of manpower and financial resources.
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