Indian Railways (IR) plays a key role in the Indian growth story. The challenge is to improve revenues and enhance customer experience while improving efficiency and reliability of operations. Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of a human brain function by machines. AI machine can perform

human mind activities, such as, logical reasoning, learning and self-correction. To be intelligent, AI machines require

enormous computing power and data. AI machines can even outsmart us by enabling proper training and providing

correct data.

AI can help us in predicting future outcomes by detecting

patterns, that are not readily apparent to the human mind.

For prediction and solving complex problems, Data Analytics,

Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep learning etc. are

being used in AI.

Potential applications of AI abound. It is being extensively

used in sophisticated applications such as in the medical and

legal fields, space exploration, genetics, robotics, logistics and

transportation. Further it has made rapid strives in new areas such as personalised service to customers,

streamlining business processes, and also in agricultural farming with remarkable results.

Though the concepts of AI are complex, its application and usability is becoming increasingly simple. Many

community-supported, open source tools and programs have been developed to utilise the sophisticated concepts

and techniques. Several small and large enterprises have been developing increasingly powerful AI tools, and

making them freely accessible in the public domain to the IT community. These tools can be used to quickly

assemble predictive models for different problem domains.

IR is poised to utilize AI in multiple ways. Customer experience, process optimization and asset maintenance can greatly benefit from the application of AI tools and techniques.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) is the Information Technology

arm of the Indian Railways. It develops, operates and maintains all the

Information Technology applications of the Indian Railways.

CRIS was set up as a Society under the Ministry of Railways in

1986. It is headquartered in New Delhi, with Regional offices in

Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, and Secunderabad.

CRIS’ current portfolio of projects covers the gamut of Indian

Railways functions, such as passenger ticketing, freight operations,

train dispatching and control, crew management, e-procurement,

financial management, track management, etc. In addition to

management of its IT systems, CRIS works with the Indian

Railways to conceive prudent technology strategies and build new

IT services in today's dynamic digital environment.

CRIS is also working to harness the latest technologies for Indian Railways. Mobile apps for customer convenience, use of cloud technology, analytics, and IoT are areas in which active development is being carried out. By mastering these frontier areas of IT, CRIS would be able to meet the Railways’ needs well into the future.

1) Akhilesh Tuteja (Head – IT Advisory Practice, KPMG)

Akhilesh Tuteja has been responsible for building and nurturing relationships with key executives in the Tech / BPM industry, enhance sales across all services of KPMG and drive content-led thought leadership on relevant and emerging industry issues. He has been leading a team of high performing consultants engaged in solving complex client issues and driving digital transformation.

2) Jaideep Chadha (Solution Architect, AI/ML, AISPL) Jaideep Chadha has over 20 years of experience. He is working as a Solution Architect with Amazon Internet Services Private Limited and specializes in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning. He brings the technology and domain expertise to help build different solutions using AI/ML. He has an MBA degree from IIM Lucknow and MS in Computer Science from University of Colorado, USA. 3) Satyajit Dwivedi (Principal Industry Consultant, Sensors and Smart Practice, SAS) Satyajit Dwivedi has more than 24 years of industry experience in Government, PSU, Energy & Utilities, Manufacturing, Retail and Defence. He is focused in areas of Government Process Re-engineering, Business Performance Improvement with Analytics in Government, Internet of Things, Smart Cities & Smart Grids, Integrated Energy Forecasting & Trading, Asset Performance Improvement and Supply Chain & Field Quality Management. 4) Sudhanshu Mittal (Director - Industry 4.0 at NASSCOM) Sudhanshu Mittal is an Intellectual Property Specialist with extensive experience in managing various projects across global teams. He is well versed with various platform and embedded technology domains. He is deeply involved in the application of IoT and AI in the Government / public sector. 5) Sheela Siddappa (Senior Manager - Data Analytics at BOSCH) Dr. Sheela Siddappa is responsible for Global Business, creating innovative end-to-end business solutions for various domains like Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales and Marketing, Health Care, Energy, etc. She specializes in the area of Revenue Management with expertise in Statistics and Operations Research. She has worked in Forecasting, Multiple Scenario Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Robust Optimization etc. 6) Prashant Shukla (National Technology Officer, Microsoft) Prashant Shukla has about 30 years of experience in multi-national settings and on multifarious technologies. He has led large multinational teams across the USA, China and India in managing a wide range of financial and business applications. He has supported automation technology impacting 370+ million online users. In his present role, he is working on the Digital India initiative that is transforming the citizen and business experience with the Indian government. 7) C. S. Kumar (Professor, Robotics Intelligent Systems Lab, IIT Kharagpur) Dr. C. S. Kumar’s research areas span control of autonomous underwater vehicles, flexure based micro-grippers, micro and nano robotics, and humanoid robots. In India, he is serving in national bodies as an expert member in the Marine Systems panel of the Naval Research Board, as an advisor for the Additive Manufacturing Society of India, and as a member of the telecom engineering centre working group on QoS networks. 8) B. K. Rout (Coordinator, Dept of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, BITS Pilani) Dr. B. K. Rout has a total of 21 years of academic experience and three years of experience in Industry. His current research interest is in the area of rehabilitation robotics to address the stroke and upper arm extremities rehabilitation process. He specializes in Industrial Robotics and the use of statistical techniques to model, synthesize and optimize complex dynamic systems.

9) Srikanth Velamakanni (Group Chief Executive & Executive VC, Fractal Analytics)

Srikanth and the team at Fractal Analytics help companies leverage analytics, AI & deep learning to transform the way they make strategic, tactical and operational decisions, providing analytics services to Fortune 500 companies. Srikanth has a BS in Electrical Engineering from IIT-Delhi and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. A former investment banker, he co-founded Fractal more than 18 years ago.

10) Sandeep Gosain (AI Tech Evangelist, Hitachi Systems) Sandeep Gosain is one of the key visionaries for the Hitachi Strategic Digital Platform "Humonics" – where he is responsible for all AI initiatives across all product lines. He has been serving industry for the last 25 years as CIO, AI strategist, and speaker, who specializes in applying artificial intelligence to real life solutions. 11) Manish Palaparthy (Director – Digital Solutions Consulting, Oracle India Private Limited) Manish Palaparthy is a technologist with varied experience with companies such as Cisco Systems,

Nokia, BEA, IBM & Oracle. In his present role, he provides advice, guidance and support to Oracle’s

strategic customers undergoing Digital Transformation. His repertoire includes technologies such as Machine Learning, IoT, Blockchain, and conversational interfaces.

12) Shashi Shekhar Vempati (CEO, Prasar Bharati) A technocrat, innovator and commentator, Shashi Shekhar Vempati is currently with Prasar Bharati - India's public broadcaster. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Shashi combines over two decades of experience as a technocrat having previously worked at Infosys Technologies in various leadership roles, with his current role in Government. He holds software design patents in the area of real time event management in sensor networks. 13) Philip Imrie (CEO, Plateway Corporation) Phillip Imrie specialises in Railway service capacity assessment and design, management system development and implementation, track and civil infrastructure, asset condition assessment, estimating and railway cost modelling, business and project management. He has a Master of Business Administration degree in Technology Management from Deakin University.

14) Jagdish Chand Bansal (Assistant Professor, South Asian University) Dr. Jagdish Chand Bansal is an Assistant Professor at South Asian University, New Delhi. Dr. Bansal is a PhD in Mathematics from IIT Roorkee. He is the editor in chief of the International Journal of Swarm Intelligence. His area of specialisation is Swarm Intelligence, in which he has published a number of papers in top international journals.

15) Sushant Dubey (Sr Industry Solutions Manager, IBM) Sushant Dubey has varied experience of working with customers and partners in multiple industry areas including manufacturing, BFSI and Government. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of open source software, SAAS, cloud, mobility & social media, where he manages the Government Industry solution. He is an alumnus of the Singapore Management University. 16) Mausam (Associate Professor, IIT Delhi) Dr Mausam has expertise in the following topics: Sequential Decision Making under Uncertainty, AI Applications to Crowd-Sourcing and Education, Natural Language Processing, Markov Decision Processes, Web Information Extraction, Multi-Document Summarization, Automated Planning, Panlingual Machine Translation, Machine Learning, Probabilistic Reasoning and Heuristic Search. He had obtained his PhD in the area of Stochastic Planning from University of Washington, Seattle