Experts from foreign universities have delivered lectures at NIT-Patna to keep students updated about academic developments worldwide.

The engineering institute availed the services under the Union human resource development ministry's Global Initiative Association Network (GIAN), which aims to give Indian students the opportunity to be taught by foreign university teachers.

Under the scheme, three professors from three universities abroad visited NIT-Patna and provided their insight on varied topics in December last year. The classes by professors Per Nordblad from Uppsala University (Sweden), G.R. Liu from the University of Cincinnati (US), and Jukka Jokilehto from University of Nova Gorica, Italy were attended not only by students but also by a large number of NIT-Patna faculty members.

Samrat Mukherjee, faculty member of the civil engineering department and coordinator of GIAN at NIT-Patna, said: "The three professors delivered lecture on physics, civil engineering and architecture."

Mukherjee said the visiting professors are renowned teachers and it was not easy for engineering students studying at institutes such as IITs and NITs to listen to them but because of the GIAN initiative, it was made available. GIAN was launched on June 29 last year. The main focus of GIAN is to garner the best international experience, enable interaction of students and faculty with the best academic and industry experts.

NIT-Patna Students were excited after participating in the lecture series. BTech student Aniket Kumar said: "The topics of my lecture series was 'perspectives and challenges in nano-magnetism and spintronics'. After attending the session, a lot of doubts on nano-magnetism were cleared." Nordblad delivered the lectures from December 7 to 13.

Echoing the views of Aniket, another student from the architecture department, who refused to disclose his name, said: "My lecture topic was 'conservation of architectural heritage of 19th and 20th century'. From December 14 to 18, professor Jukka Jokilehto highlighted various aspects of conserving the heritage buildings of the 19th and 20th century."

The GIAN initiative is coordinated by IIT-Kharagpur. Under the scheme, central government educational institutions first have to prepare the course. After preparing the course topic (including the course name and the preferred professor's name), the institution has to upload it on the GIAN portal.

Professors from prestigious educational institutions in the country review the topics and make changes based on the requirements. After review, the ministry gives it final consent and based on the suitability of foreign professors they visit the institutions.

The sources said for each visit of foreign professors, the ministry spends $8000, which includes the honorarium of foreign teacher and expenses incurred in accommodation and airfare.