India-US Global Challenges Institute to take off as virtual platform for doctoral student exchange
ET has gathered that the India-US Global Challenges Institute will soon take off as a virtual platform with a ten-member Governing Council co-chaired by the two countries and a physical secretariat/program office expected to be housed in New Delhi.
While IIT Kanpur will lead the initiative from India with Director Abhay Karandikar representing Indian institutes as India’s co-chair, the US side is expected to bring in Association of American Universities President Barbara R Snyder as co-chair.
The Institute will start off with a $10mln seed funding- jointly pitched by the US and India- to fund collaborative R&D in five-six key areas across partner institutes in the two countries.
The first set of areas identified for collaboration are- sustainable energy and agriculture, health and pandemic preparedness, semiconductor technology and manufacturing, advanced materials, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and quantum science.
ET gathers that the Institute will start off with five joint research projects- funded with $2million each. The idea is have two lead institutes from both countries for each project and these in turn will be linked to several other project specific institutes- like a hub and spoke model.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has already been inked between Indian universities, represented by the Council of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Council), and the Association of American Universities (AAU) to establish the India-U.S.
