Oct. 28: Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati has inked a memorandum of understanding with Hanyang University, Korea, for research and educational collaborations in undergraduate and postgraduate academic and research programmes.
A senior IIT Guwahati official today said the memorandum of understanding was signed here on October 20 by IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua and Hanyang University College of Engineering dean Dong Hyuk Shin.
“Signing of the new agreement will further strengthen international collaboration of IIT Guwahati,” the official said, adding that a lot could be gained with these international collaborations as they added and enriched the expertise of the local institute.
“It opens new avenues of research for our students, who can then carry out research in their respective fields in other universities, which may have better facilities,” he added.
At present, IIT Guwahati has 11 departments and three inter-disciplinary academic centres covering all major engineering, science and humanities disciplines, offering BTech, BDes, MA, MDes, MTech, MSc and PhD programmes.
The official said IIT Guwahati had now graduated to the list of established IITs and even central government departments requested its help, regarding which the feedback had been good.
In 2010-11, the institute obtained sponsored research and consultancy projects worth Rs 40 crore as compared to Rs 39 crore in 2009-10. Over 330 projects are in progress at the institute.
The institute, which is focussing more on research and development and has seen a big jump of PhD students from 575 to 710, offers a “start-up research grant” to newly recruited faculty members to start their research.
Hanyang University is one of the most prestigious universities of Korea and was the first private college of engineering, producing numerous specialists who have worked as the backbone of the nation’s industrialisation and modernisation drive. It has two campuses with 25 colleges.
IIT Guwahati already has agreements with various other institutes, including Erasmus Mundus, European Commission, Belgium, University of Nottingham, UK, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal, Queen’s University, Canada, Technische Universitat Muenchen, Germany and National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NIICT), Japan, among others, for joint research and academic collaborations.
