Chennai: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras has joined the elite consortium of Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering (AOTULE), opening up a plethora of opportunities for the faculty and students of IIT Madras to collaborate with their counterparts in the consortium of 11 premiere engineering universities in the Asia-Oceania region.
IIT Madras was invited to attend the 9th AOTULE meeting and conference at the University of Melbourne, Australia, last month as an observer, and was unanimously offered membership in the consortium. Prof. Sudarsan Padmanabhan, advisor (foreign students), IIT Madras and Ms. Kavitha, manager (office of international relations), IIT Madras, represented the institute at the meeting.
Prof. Nagarajan, dean (international & alumni relations) at IIT Madras, pointed out that this could enhance research collaborations with faculty at these outstanding institutions in addition to offering semester-abroad opportunities for students. At the two-day event, deans of member institutions made brief presentations, generating discussion on issues such as student, faculty mobility and engineering curriculum compatibility. Parallel sessions were organised for students from member institutions to present their research work.
Primary emphasis in this meeting was to formulate a collective response to “avalanche of change”, perceived and real, in higher education. It may be pointed out that consortium membership includes highly-ranked universities like the University of Melbourne, Tsinghua University (China), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Nanyang Technical University (Singapore), KAIST (Korea) and Tokyo Institute of Technology.
