The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur is preparing to open what it describes as India’s first dedicated academic school for Physical Artificial Intelligence. The Benjamin Gupta School of Physical AI will be built with a total investment of ₹35 crore, signalling that India’s top engineering institutes now see the next phase of AI unfolding not just on screens and servers, but in machines, laboratories, factories and hospitals.

A ₹35 crore school built on alumni support

The school is being set up under a memorandum of understanding signed between IIT Kharagpur, its alumnus and philanthropist Vinod Gupta, and the IITKGP Foundation USA, according to an institute statement reported by PTI on 26 October. The Vinod Gupta family is contributing ₹12.5 crore and an alumnus who has chosen to remain anonymous is giving ₹10 crore, with IIT Kharagpur funding the balance.

The school takes its name from Vinod Gupta’s late son, Benjamin Gupta. It will be home to the institute’s Department of Artificial Intelligence and is intended to support interdisciplinary teaching and research across departments.

What Physical AI means

Most of today’s mainstream AI, from chatbots to recommendation engines, learns patterns from data and operates largely in the digital realm. Physical AI, as IIT Kharagpur frames it, is about intelligent systems that can perceive, understand and act in the real world. It does this by blending machine learning with scientific principles, real-world sensing and intelligent control.

The new school’s research and teaching agenda spans:

• Physics-informed machine learning and scientific AI
• Digital twins of physical systems and processes
• Intelligent robotics and autonomous systems
• Advanced sensing and AI-enabled experimentation
• Reliable, explainable and responsible AI, particularly for safety-critical uses where physical accuracy, robustness and accountability matter

Moving AI beyond the black box

Institute director Suman Chakraborty positioned the school as IIT Kharagpur’s bid to lead the next stage of the AI journey in India. “AI has transformed the way we process information. Its next great leap will be in transforming the way we understand, engineer and interact with the physical world. IIT-Kharagpur aspires to lead this transition in India through the Benjamin Gupta School of Physical AI,” he said, as quoted by PTI.

Chakraborty added that the initiative aims to take AI beyond its role as a “black-box” technology, encouraging professionals to pair algorithmic capability with fundamental scientific and domain-specific knowledge.

Programmes for students and working professionals

Academic programmes are expected to start from the upcoming academic session, subject to the necessary approvals. They will be open to students, researchers and working professionals from engineering, the physical sciences, the life sciences and medicine, with an emphasis on combining domain expertise with modern AI skills. The school also plans to work with industry, healthcare institutions, research laboratories, startups and international partners on research, technology development and professional reskilling.

Why it matters for India’s AI ambitions

As generative AI becomes commonplace, the competitive edge is shifting to AI that can safely operate in the physical world, such as robots on shop floors, autonomous vehicles and drones, digital twins of plants and power grids, and AI-assisted diagnostics and lab experiments. These applications need engineers who understand both the algorithms and the physics, chemistry or biology they are modelling, because errors carry real-world consequences.

For India, that skills base is central to ambitions in manufacturing, mobility, energy, healthcare and deep-tech research. By making explainability and reliability core design goals and opening its programmes to working professionals, IIT Kharagpur’s new school could help close the gap between India’s large pool of software-focused AI talent and the cross-disciplinary expertise that Physical AI demands. For enterprise technology leaders, it offers a future pipeline of talent and a potential research partner as AI moves from the data centre into physical operations.

Image credit: Main Building, IIT Kharagpur. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

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