RISE (Research Alliance for Industry and Academia in Software Engineering) is an ACM SIGSOFT Task Force and a research-driven initiative that fosters engagement between Indian software industry, government, and the global software engineering research community. Its current focus is on AI and Software Engineering in India.
The RISE website is available at https://rise-sigsoft.github.io/.
Purpose
India hosts one of the world’s largest software engineering ecosystems, employing over five million software professionals across diverse domains and cities, with major global R&D centres operated by Microsoft, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, Shell, SAP, and others. Yet despite accounting for around 16% of the global software workforce, India’s representation in top-tier international software engineering venues such as ICSE, FSE, and ASE remains below 2%.
As AI-driven software development accelerates, India’s industry is witnessing large-scale adoption of generative and predictive AI in everyday software work. This presents an opportunity to document, understand, and shape how AI is transforming software engineering practice in real-world industrial contexts.
Operating under ACM SIGSOFT, RISE works to surface real-world AI and software engineering challenges from Indian industry, mobilise academic researchers to engage with them, and build structured linkages with industry bodies such as NASSCOM and adjacent platforms across industry and government.
Mission
The Task Force is organised around four working pillars.
Industry Engagement and Challenge Discovery. Reach out to major software R&D centres, software powerhouses, and startups across India to identify and document real-world AI-driven software engineering practices, challenges, and emerging solutions through structured meetings and industry events.
Industry Body Integration. Build formal collaboration between ACM SIGSOFT and Indian software industry bodies such as NASSCOM, with the goal of creating dedicated threads on Software Engineering and Research toward Indian and global software engineering research.
Co-designed Research Challenges. Mobilise academic researchers to engage with industry-defined problems through co-created research challenge calls, pilot projects, and a curated catalogue of challenges accessible to the SIGSOFT community.
Industry Consortium and Sustainability. Build an industry consortium across associations, R&D centres, and product firms to sustain RISE activities, with the aim of industry-led continuity integrated into ISEC and adjacent forums over time.
Ecosystem
RISE works across a broad set of stakeholders that shape software engineering practice and research in India. These span industry and R&D centres, industry bodies and associations, government and standards bodies, and academic and industry conference venues. A working stakeholder map is maintained by the Task Force and will be expanded as it progresses.
Leadership
RISE is chaired by Sridhar Chimalakonda, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Tirupati, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, and Digital Learning Co-Chair of ACM SIGSOFT. Co-leads from industry and academia will be identified and confirmed in due course.
RISE is established as an ACM SIGSOFT Task Force, with annual reporting to the SIGSOFT Executive Committee.
Get Involved
RISE welcomes researchers, practitioners, students, and chapter representatives who would like to take part. You can express your interest in participating through the form on the RISE website:
Contact
Sridhar Chimalakonda, Chair, RISE Task Force
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Tirupati
Email: ch@iittp.ac.in