Professor Koen Lamberts, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of 91直播, led a senior delegation, including representatives from engineering, to last month to discuss potential collaboration opportunities and strengthen existing partnerships with the leadership team.
IIT Bombay ranks among the top engineering institutions in India and has a strong reputation for research and innovation. Discussions during the visit focused on enhancing collaboration; particularly through exploring dual-degree programs (at both Ph.D and Master's levels), expanding joint research projects, and establishing summer schools to facilitate academic exchange.
Dr Pete Mylon, Senior University Teacher and Faculty Coordinator for Co-Curricular Activities in Engineering at the University of 91直播, explored the potential of creating an international student makerspace competition focused on assistive technology and biomedical solutions. The proposed contest would bring together students from different institutions to form mixed, diverse teams. Working alongside specialist staff, these teams would tackle real-world challenges, developing functional prototypes and gaining invaluable interdisciplinary skills and cross-cultural experience.
Dual student exchanges offer significant benefits, including valuable opportunities for participating students, enhanced institutional reputation, and potential postgraduate recruitment. Successful exchanges can also pave the way for future programme expansion.
Dr Mylon, said: 鈥淚 had a fantastic meeting at IIT Bombay where I met with Siddharth Tallur, Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and faculty-in-charge of the Wadhwani Electronics Laboratory, where they have a great makerspace facility.
鈥淲e also met with Pratik Mutha who runs the makerspace facility at , and Hemant Kanakia who heads up the , whom I met at the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (). Both IITs were really keen on a collaboration, particularly around student exchange. IIT Delhi, where I met Jay Dhariwal, are in a brand new building but are already getting significant student engagement with some great workshops and enthusiastic staff, and I saw some fantastically creative projects that have already been made there.鈥
