On 1 October, Infosys announced a collaboration with Columbia University that includes an enterprise AI research centre at One World Trade Center in New York and three research themes. Columbia Engineering will lead the Infosys Topaz – Columbia University Enterprise AI Center, which sits in Infosys’s office at the building.
Key points
- Infosys says the centre will connect Columbia Engineering research with its Topaz enterprise AI portfolio.
- The three themes cover business processes and user experiences, responsible and sustainable AI, and marketing.
- Infosys plans workshops and research collaboration with clients across industries.
- A centre directory lists eight personnel profiles, split evenly between Columbia and Infosys, Unite.AI reported.
Infosys Topaz gets a New York research centre
Infosys describes Topaz as its portfolio of services, solutions and platforms built around generative and agentic AI. The company says the centre is intended to help customers develop AI applications and deploy them across large organisations. The arrangement places that work alongside Columbia Engineering researchers at an existing Infosys office rather than at a separate university site.
The programme will bring clients into workshops, co-innovation sessions and research projects across industries, Infosys says. Its stated participants extend beyond the two institutions to business leaders, research and development staff, students and technology practitioners.
Satish HC, Infosys’s executive vice-president and chief delivery officer, said the partnership draws on both organisations’ work on AI applications for enterprises. Infosys presents the centre as part of its wider collaboration with academic institutions. The New York site gives the Topaz portfolio a named research setting for work involving Columbia faculty and Infosys staff.
Infosys and Columbia plan three research themes
The first theme, AI-First Experiences and Processes, concerns the way people use software and the way companies organise work around it. Infosys says the research will examine voice and free-form text as interfaces. It will also consider changes to business processes and models, including the removal of tasks or organisational layers.
Responsible and Sustainable AI, the second theme, covers regulatory complexity, ethics, cybersecurity and energy use. Infosys says the work aims to incorporate transparency, explainability and sustainability into the design of AI systems. These subjects sit alongside the centre’s stated interest in how businesses govern and adopt such systems, according to Unite.AI’s account of its mission.
The third theme, AI for Marketing, brings the research closer to a defined business function. Infosys says it will examine personalised customer interactions and the use of agents in campaign optimisation. Advanced analytics, predictive modelling and generated content are also within its scope. The company describes marketing performance as an intended area of application for the work.
Across the themes, the planned client sessions span questions about interfaces, controls and specific uses of AI. Infosys has framed the programme around generative and agentic technologies in its Topaz portfolio, while Columbia Engineering will lead the research centre. The work described ranges from redesigning existing processes to examining the requirements for deploying AI in them.
Iyengar leads an eight-person centre roster
Garud Iyengar is the centre’s founding director, Infosys said. He is the Avanessians Director of the Columbia Data Science Institute and a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia Engineering. Iyengar said the collaboration would bring research, students and enterprises together to develop AI systems for business use.
The centre’s personnel directory lists eight profiles, four affiliated with Columbia University and four with Infosys, Unite.AI reported. Columbia computer science faculty Eugene Wu and Junfeng Yang are listed alongside Iyengar. Tasnia Islam, a programme manager at Columbia Engineering, completes the university group in the directory.
On the Infosys side, the directory includes executive vice-president and chief technology officer Rafee Tarafdar. It also names Syed Ahmed, an assistant vice-president who heads the Infosys Responsible AI Office, and Srinivasan Natarajan, an assistant vice-president at the Infosys Centre for Emerging Technology Solutions. The fourth Infosys profile is Jeffrey M. Levenberg, a manager at the company.
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