HOUSTON: The Texas Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI-CoE) led by Indian-American Krishna Kumar Edathil has received the state innovation of the year award as part of the 2021 StateScoop 50 National Awards.
Krishna, originally from Kerela, serves as the practice leader and director of Enterprise Solution Services for the AL-CoE, formed in December last year.
He was given the additional responsibility of leading State’s Artificial Intelligence initiative after his efforts to put Texas in the A category of National Cloud Digital surveys.
Texas was in B in 2018.
The centre under his leadership helps state and local governments use Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to foster digital transformation and improve efficiency.
“We are so excited to receive recognition for this truly innovative initiative that utilises technology to improve government processes,” Department of Information Resources (DIR) Executive Director and State of Texas Chief Information Officer Amanda Crawford said in a statement.
“I’m very proud of the work that the AI-CoE team has done in the past six months. The response we have received from state agencies and now StateScoop shows the center’s success,” Crawford said.
Krishna, who emigrated to the US in 2000, said: “We are developing use cases and success stories in all towers of artificial intelligence and are offering a growing portfolio of training to our customers.
“We believe this will provide immediate benefit to Texas’ public sector and help retain talent as well as attract a new generation of state government workforce”.
The AI-CoE, a public-private partnership that offers free AI skills training to state information technology leaders, received the state innovation of the year award from the Scoop News Group as part of the 2021 StateScoop 50 National Awards.
It is one of the nine recipients of the State IT Innovation of the Year Award, which are among those StateScoop honoured for “the most innovative and influential projects in state government and the people with the passion and drive to advance the use of digital technology inside state agencies.”
Nominations for the awards opened in February, and the website received thousands of nominations of leaders and projects for the awards.