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| From left, Madhavan Nair, director of the Indian Space Research Organization; Ramesh Rao, director, University of California–San Diego’s (UCSD) Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology; Cornell President Hunter Rawlings; Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India; and Frieder Seible, dean, UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering at the signing ceremony. |
India, which has cornered the world economy’s virtual backroom, now will bring leading American science, engineering, and computing faculty from Cornell University and other top colleges to teach students at Amrita University and other institutions, thanks to EduSat and emerging distance-learning strategies.
Cornell University President Hunter R. Rawlings III signed a three-year agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 20 in Washington, D.C., that will bring visiting faculty and disseminate their lectures via EduSat. “This is a tremendous opportunity for Cornell University faculty to gain wide exposure in India’s higher education system, and for Cornell to enhance its ties with India at the highest level,” Rawlings said.
Carnegie Mellon University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of California campuses at Berkeley and San Diego are partners in the consortium along with Cornell. Qualcomm Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Cadence Design Systems are funding this program.
Kent Fuchs, dean of Cornell’s College of Engineering, said: “Cornell enjoys long and meaningful relationships with Qualcomm and Microsoft; this program provides an opportunity to extend that relationship to collaborate with our peers at top institutes in India.”
Cornell has a very strong Indian student presence on campus, with 333 Indian nationals, the fourth-largest international presence on campus.
The university maintains eight existing agreements with Indian institutions, mostly in agriculture, according to David Wippman, Cornell vice provost for international affairs. This engineering-oriented agreement expands the university’s relationship with India. “It exposes our top faculty to India’s vast student body and opens the doors for other projects,” he said.
—Cornell News Service
