Tanmoy Chakraborty
Winner of Outstanding Contributions in Computing Education (OCCE) Award 2025
Chair Professor in AI, Department of EE and School of AI, IIT Delhi
Profile
Keynote Title:
Ctrl-Alt-Teach: Rebooting NLP Education in the LLM Era
Abstract:
The rapid rise of large language models (LLMs) has fundamentally reshaped the practice, pedagogy, and purpose of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Many concepts that once defined NLP -- feature engineering, syntactic pipelines, even task-specific architectures, have been abstracted away by foundation models that can generalise across tasks with minimal supervision. Yet the classical foundations remain essential for understanding why these models work, where they fail, and how to build responsible NLP systems.
This talk argues that NLP education (both teaching and research) now requires a deliberate reboot: one that integrates the intellectual rigor of traditional NLP with the emerging capabilities, limitations, and societal impacts of LLMs. I will outline a refreshed curriculum framework, highlight new research opportunities opened by LLM-centered workflows, and discuss how we can train a generation of students to be principled, critical, and creative builders of language technologies.
Tanmoy Chakraborty
is a Rajiv Khemani Young Faculty Chair Professor in AI and an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and the School of AI at IIT Delhi.
He leads the
Laboratory for Computational Social Systems (LCS2),
a research group that primarily focuses on building economical, adaptable and interpretable language models.He served as the DAAD visiting professor at MPI Saarbrucken, PECFAR visiting professor at TU Munich and Humboldt visiting professor at TU Darmstadt.
Tanmoy has received numerous recognitions, including the ACM India Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education Award, Indian National Academic of Science Young Associate, Ramanujan Fellowship, ACL '23 Outstanding Paper Award, IJCAI'23 AI for Social Good Award, and several faculty awards from industries like Microsoft, Google, LinkedIn, JP Morgan, and Adobe.He has authored two textbooks —
Social Network Analysis and Introduction to Large Language Models.
Tanmoy earned his PhD from IIT Kharagpur in 2015 as a Google PhD Scholar.
More details may be found at
tanmoychak.com.
Maria Mercedes (Didith) T. Rodrigo
Professor at Department of Information Systems and Computer Science, Ateneo de Manila University |
Profile
Keynote Title: Eye Tracking Studies of Novice Programmer Debugging Behavior
Abstract:
Debugging is a critical skill that computer science students and professionals must master. However, research on understanding how programmers read and comprehend error messages is still limited. In this keynote, I will share the design and implementation of a series of eye tracking studies that we conducted to determine the extent to which novices read error messages, how they parse the code to find the source of the error, and how debugging behavior relates to individual differences. I will discuss the choice of equipment, the set up of the experiment, and the limitations we observed. I will also share the specific challenges researchers face when conducting these types of studies.
Maria Mercedes (Didith) T. Rodrigo is a professor at the Department of Information Systems and Computer Science. Her research interests include learning analytics, artificial intelligence in education, technology in education, and educational games. She is the head of the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences and co-lead of the Ateneo Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Laboratory. Her research work focuses on artificial intelligence in education, learning analytics, and educational games.
Tanuja Ganu
Director of Research Engineering, Microsoft |
Profile
Keynote Title: Reimagining Education in the Age of AI
Abstract:
The age of AI presents a profound opportunity—and responsibility—to reimagine education from the ground up. It is an opportunity to create personalized, adaptive, inclusive, and purpose-driven learning. We must now reimagine education from first principles: What should we learn? How should we learn it? How do we assess knowledge meaningfully? What skills will be essential for the future? And how do we ensure that learning leads to purposeful societal outcomes?We will examine the opportunities AI presents to make education more inclusive, adaptive, and scalable, while also confronting the challenges of equity, affordability, long-term cognitive impact etc.As we stand at this inflection point, it is imperative that the entire ecosystem—educators, researchers, technologists, policymakers, and learners—come together to rethink education. This talk will highlight the need for collaborative innovation, open infrastructure, and evolving pedagogy that embraces AI not as a replacement, but as a partner in learning. Drawing from real-world initiatives and research, including work on Shiksha Copilot – an AI assistant for educators, we’ll look at how India can lead in building context-aware, human-centric educational systems for the AI era—systems that reflect the lived realities of learners across the country and beyond.
Tanuja Ganu is a Director of Research Engineering at Microsoft Research, India. She leads MSR’s center for Societal impact through Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (SCAI). SCAI focuses on creating, nurturing and deploying technologies that will have large scale impact on society.Her research interests are in Applied AI and AI for Social Good. Her current research work is focused on validating the use of GenAI technologies and understanding the gaps and new research directions for addressing important societal challenges in diverse domains like education, agriculture and healthcare. This includes the work on project VeLLM (UniVersal Empowerment with LLMs) and Shiksha copilot – a copilot for empowering teachers to generate engaging and personalized learning experiences.
Clif Kussmaul
Principal Consultant at Green Mango Associates | Profile
Keynote Title: Guiding Computing Students to Develop Knowledge, Skills, & Attitudes for an Uncertain Future
Abstract:Our world continues to face accelerating changes in our environment, technology, and society. Students must prepare for careers and lives that embrace and adapt to these changes. I have had the good fortune to work with educators and researchers around the world to leverage and combine pedagogy and technology to support students through entrepreneurial projects, participation in open source projects, and guided inquiry learning. A key first step is to reflect on learning objectives – what will students be able to do, and how will we know? In this interactive session we will explore some of the challenges and opportunities in computing education, and consider future directions to transform ourselves, our students, and our future.
Clif Kussmaul, PhD, is Principal Consultant at Green Mango Associates, which focuses on research, software development, and professional development involving active and guided inquiry learning. Formerly, he was Associate Professor at Muhlenberg College, USA, Fulbright-Nehru Scholar at the University of Kerala, a Fulbright Specialist in Ghana and Vietnam, and a Senior Specialist at Lodz University of Technology, Poland. He has received grants from the US National Science Foundation, Google, Hewlett Packard, and VentureWell. He has published and presented numerous papers, developed varied classroom activities, and led faculty development programs across the US and India and elsewhere.
Shoaib Dar
Founder-CEO, Pi Jam Foundation | Profile
Keynote Title: Socho, Samajho, Banao, Badlo: Rethinking India’s Computational Future from the Ground Up
Abstract: Despite growing infrastructure and numerous national initiatives, few students in India’s government schools engage with technology in meaningful, creative ways. This keynote urges a shift from surface-level terminology to deeper questions of purpose, context, and imagination in computing education. Rooted in the lived realities of students, Socho, Samajho, Banao, Badlo is not just a framework, but a way of reimagining what computing education can look like in India. This keynote explores how children from Kashmir to tribal Maharashtra are thinking critically, making sense of their world, building with purpose, and shaping change from mapping local food cultures to training AI on bird calls.By shifting focus from “what to teach” to “what systems we need to unlock thinking,” we argue that India’s digital future depends not just on scaling devices, but on nurturing thinking environments, rooted in equity, curiosity, and cultural relevance.
Shoaib Dar, an engineer turned educator, is the CEO and founder of Pi Jam Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to equip children and educators of India with access to affordable technology and enhanced quality of computer science education that fosters essential skills like problem solving, creativity and digital skills. Inspired by his time as a Teacher in a Government school, where he witnessed digital and educational inequities due to limited access to technology, Shoaib aims to equip students from low-income backgrounds with essential 21st-century skills.Shoaib’s contributions have earned him a place among India’s “Top 10 Modern Engineers” by Better India, inclusion in Hindustan Times’ “30 Under 30” (2017, 2018), and recognition as a Distinguished Alumnus for Social Development from Vellore Institute of Technology. His honors also include the Nasscom Social Innovation Forum Award in Education Innovation (2018), the Better India PC for Change award, and features in key cohorts like Nudge NCore Tech and InnovatEd (2018). He has been awarded prestigious fellowships, including the Acumen Fellowship (2022), the Wipro Seeding Fellowship, and the Echoing Green Finalist Fellowship (2024).
Dr. Radhika Trikha
CEO, Agriculture and Water Technology Development Hub (iHub AWaDH), IIT Ropar - Technology and Innovation Foundation |
Profile
Keynote Title: AI on the Field: Rethinking Agriculture and Education Together
Abstract:
At IIT Ropar’s Agriculture and Water Technology Development Hub (AWaDH), we’re building more than just smart farming systems, we're crafting a blueprint for the future of AI-led education and impact-driven innovation. Our flagship initiative, ANNAM.AI, is India’s first AI-powered platform dedicated to agricultural intelligence. Through ANNAM.AI and other AWaDH-led projects, we’re harnessing AI, IoT, and data science to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in agriculture: from pest prediction and soil health monitoring to climate-resilient farming advisory systems.But here’s the exciting part: these innovations aren’t just transforming farms; they’re transforming classrooms. In this talk, I’ll explore how these real-world, field-tested technologies are helping us rethink computing education. We’ll look at how:
- Agri-tech challenges can be turned into hands-on AI learning modules;
- Local, sustainable, and ethical contexts can enrich computing curricula;
- And how interdisciplinary collaboration between agriculture, data, and design can inspire the next generation of tech creators.
Dr. Radhika Trikha is the CEO of IIT Ropar Technology and Innovation Foundation – Agriculture and Water Technology Development Hub (AWaDH), a DST-supported initiative under the NM-ICPS mission. She leads efforts in fostering deep-tech innovation, entrepreneurship, and skilling in AI, IoT, machine learning, and smart agriculture and water solutions. A policy expert and microbiologist by training, Dr. Trikha has contributed to India’s National STI Policy and held senior fellowships at IISc Bangalore and Panjab University, focusing on science diplomacy, innovation management, and public-private partnerships. A gold medallist and INSPIRE Fellow, she also holds an MBA in International Business and has advanced training in IPR and policy innovation.