‘SUST 1952’, the team from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology became the champion of the ‘AI for Bangla 2.0’ competition by creating a ‘Bangla Neural Text to Speech’ program to convert text to speech using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Members of this team: Rajan Saha, Arif Ahmed and Mohammad Shahidur Rahman received two lakh taka, a crest and certificate as awards.
Among 55 ideas in the competition, the first runner-up team Ruddhaswar Subakya got Tk. 1 lakh and the second runner-up language team Banglanet got a check of Tk. 50 thousand and a certificate. The team members of Ruddhaswar Subakya are – Partha Ghosh, Mehdi Hasan, Shafkat Kibria and Md. Shahidur Rahman. And the language team Banglanet members were Md. Masum Bhuiyan, Mushfiq Anwar and Ezharul Islam.
The Perpetual Learners team’s Multi-View Bengali Sign Language Dataset and Continuous BSL Recognition Model, Shabdkalpadrum‘s video-based SignBD Word, Sign SUST team’s Real Time Sign Language Recognition Using Action Recognition, team Silent Sentinels’ From Gestures to Words and BanglaAI team’s BanglaQuad received special honors. .
The results of the Bangla Design Font Competition were also announced on the same occasion. Kazi Mohsin became the first in the competition. He received one lakh taka as the first prize. In the competition, Shahid Sharif Russell got the second prize and the third prize went to Md. Anwar Hossain. Other winners were Sajedur Rahman Sabuj, Md Al Amin, Maidul Hasan Russell, Osman Hayat Miron, Md. Manjur Hossain, Mollah Sharif and Md. Zahidul Islam.
On Monday evening, the secretary of the ICT Division Md. Samsul Arefin handed over the prizes to the winners at Hotel Inter-Continental in the capital. While speaking as the chief guest, the ICT Secretary called for more work on Bengali language to spread this language to people all over the world, noting that Bengali language has not yet progressed much in the technology sector.
Professor Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, the academician and the president of the jury of the competition, praised the winners for their love of language in the program presided over by Bangladesh Computer Council Executive Director Ranjit Kumar.
Prof. Nabil Mahmud of North South University, Professor Moinul Islam Jaber of Dhaka University, cartoonist Mehdi Haque and developer Mesbah Uddin Khan also spoke in the program moderated by EBLICT’s language technology expert Mamun Or Rashid.
In his welcome speech, Md Mahbub Karim, the Project Director of ‘Enrichment of Bengali Language in Information Technology through Research and Development’ said that despite the scarcity of resources, 7 tools out of 16 tools have gone live. The presenter said that some more tools will be released soon.
It may be noted that, in order to Enrich Bengali language in information technology and encourage research, young researchers and programmers were called through the competition by the Bangladesh Computer Council of the Government Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division’s ‘Enrichment of Bengali Language in Information Technology’ project for the second time to present Bangla language-based datasets, models or working-prototypes.