Indonesia launches first university AI centre with Nvidia and Indosat

The Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi), mobile operator Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Nvidia inaugurated this week the AI technology centre of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM Indosat NVAITC) in Yogyakarta. The centre is part of the national “AI Center of Excellence” initiative and its stated aim is to connect government, industry and academia to develop AI solutions for the country’s most urgent challenges. Meutya Hafid said, “The move is intended to position Indonesia not only as a technology adopter but as a developer and contributor of innovation to the world.”

The centre runs on the full Nvidia platform and the “GPU Merdeka” GPU-as-a-service offering from Indosat, providing UGM researchers and students with organisational-scale accelerated computing, pretrained models, development frameworks, open-source AI software and technical support, as well as access to a global ecosystem of experts. Vikram Sinha said, “The goal is to bring the world’s best technologies to Indonesia while expanding access for researchers, students, startups and innovators across the archipelago.”

Three flagship projects define the centre’s early work. Indonesia records over one million new TB cases per year; the disease is curable but lethal if not detected early. A team from the faculties of medicine, public health and nursing led by Dr. Dian Kesumapramudya Nurputra is developing an AI-based electronic scanning technology, eNose-TB, for use in rural, equipment-poor settings. Two additional projects focus on agriculture and disaster preparedness, critical areas for a nation of about 280 million people situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Marc Hamilton, vice president of solution architecture and engineering at Nvidia, said, “the company is committed to equipping Indonesian talent with open Nemotron models and engineering expertise to turn potential into innovation with local and global impact.” Researchers have previously struggled to move from proof-of-concept to impact because of a lack of compute resources, models and infrastructure, a gap the new centre aims to close.