As Part Of A Suicide Prevention Project, IIT Madras Will Launch A Facial Recognition Attendance System And An App That Coordinates Parent Visits

IIT Madras will launch two initiatives as part of its suicide prevention initiative in the upcoming academic year beginning in August: a face recognition attendance management system to identify students absent for prolonged periods of time and an app that will allow parents to regularly interact with their children.

Four suicide incidents occurred at the institute between February and July 2023. According to the institute, these initiatives will be a part of a bigger suicide prevention strategy. The head of IIT Madras, V Kamakoti, stated that the automated attendance system would use face-recognition technology and added that the institute's data science programmes would aid in analysing this data.

The initiatives, according to Kamakoti, would not "intrude on anybody's privacy," and attendance at the gym, mess, and classes would all be kept. We'll just combine that data to look for patterns.

"In a few of those locations, we are already recording attendance. The automated approach will now be used to consolidate it rather than the conventional register attendance, he continued. The director claimed that while developing the procedures, the tendencies in the recent suicide instances were taken into consideration.