Bharath Kumar Salla Designs Andhra Pradesh's First Postgraduate HCI Programme at ANU — 1,246 Students Enrol in Year One
Acharya Nagarjuna University's MSc Human-Computer Interaction programme, designed entirely by ANU alumnus Bharath Kumar Salla, posted an 89% seat fill rate in its first year — the only postgraduate tech programme at the university to grow enrolment in year two.
GUNTUR: In a significant development for higher education in Andhra Pradesh, Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU) — ranked 84th nationally in the Government of India's NIRF 2025 University Rankings — has launched the first standalone Master's-level Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) programme in the state. The programme was designed entirely by Bharath Kumar Salla, a doctoral alumnus of ANU and a Lead UX Researcher and Designer with thirteen years of global industry experience.
The two-year MSc Human-Computer Interaction programme, bearing Programme Code HCI-MSC-2025, commenced in Academic Year 2025–26 and is offered across 28 affiliated institutions under ANU spanning the Krishna, Guntur, and Prakasam districts of Andhra Pradesh.
First of Its Kind in the State
Until the launch of this programme, no state public university in Andhra Pradesh offered a dedicated postgraduate degree in Human-Computer Interaction — the discipline that underpins the design of every digital product, application, and interface used by millions of Indians daily. While institutions such as IITs and IIITs have built HCI research capacity, the state public university system — which serves the largest proportion of students in India — had no formal postgraduate pathway in this field.
Salla, who holds a Ph.D. from ANU and has worked across leading technology organisations for over a decade, identified this gap and proposed the programme to the university's Department of Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction. Following a formal selection process evaluating 45 candidates across five criteria — academic qualifications, industry experience, research output, HCI expertise, and curriculum design capability — Salla was selected as the sole programme architect.
Curriculum Built From Scratch
The MSc HCI curriculum is a 107-page, four-semester, 96-credit programme comprising 26 courses covering the full spectrum of the HCI discipline — from foundational cognitive psychology and interaction design theory to applied UX research, accessibility, artificial intelligence interfaces, augmented and virtual reality design, and an original research dissertation. No existing template was used. Every element was designed from first principles by Salla.
The programme was formally adopted by ANU's Academic Senate on 14 August 2025 and ratified by the Executive Council on 28 August 2025, before being officially launched on 25 May 2025.
Enrollment Numbers Tell the Story
The programme's reception has been remarkable. In its inaugural year, MSc HCI achieved an 89% seat fill rate across all 28 affiliated institutions — the highest among all comparable postgraduate technology programmes at the university, including MCA which has been running since 1987.
The numbers speak clearly:
| Programme | Established | Fill Rate Year 1 | Growth Year 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCA | 1987 | 40% | −12.5% |
| M.Tech CSE | 2011 | 75.5% | −7.3% |
| MSc Computational Data Science | 2023 | 46% | −13% |
| MSc HCI | 2025 | 89% | +19.1% |
Total enrolled students in Batch 1: 1,246. Total in Batch 2: 1,484 — a growth of 19.1% — making MSc HCI the only programme in this comparison to achieve positive enrollment growth while all three established programmes declined.
Students Validate the Curriculum
Student feedback collected by the university's Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) across Semester 1 and Semester 2 shows an overall programme satisfaction score of 4.6 out of 5, with a response rate of 97.8% in Semester 2. Coverage of emerging topics including AI interfaces and AR/VR design scored highest at 4.7 out of 5 — reflecting student recognition of the programme's forward-looking curriculum design.
Field Recognition
Dr. Preeti Mudliar, Assistant Professor at IIIT Bangalore and co-author of the ACM CHI 2025 paper "Bridging Gaps in HCI: Advancing Education, Research, and Careers in Asia," has described the programme as directly addressing the gap her research identified across the continent. "The absence of structured HCI postgraduate pathways in Indian public universities is precisely what motivated this initiative," Salla told Careers360.
What is HCI and Why Does it Matter?
Human-Computer Interaction is the discipline behind the design of every app, website, and digital interface. As India's digital economy expands — with over 800 million internet users and a rapidly growing UX and product design industry — the demand for formally trained HCI professionals has outpaced supply. This programme is the first attempt at the state public university level in Andhra Pradesh to address that demand at scale.
With nearly 1,500 students now studying an HCI curriculum designed by a single practitioner-researcher, the programme represents one of the most significant curriculum contributions to emerge from India's state university system in recent years.
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