Singapore’ Nanyang tech varsity-NIT-T new MoU on cards: Subra Suresh

TIRUCHY: The Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU), with a wide global network involving over 100 universities and institutes, is negotiating with the National Institute of Technology-Tiruchy (NIT-T) to have an MoU on various programmes including students and faculty exchanges, according to NTU’s vice-chancellor Prof. Subra Suresh.

He told newsmen at Tiruchy on Saturday that they are having 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and its Graduate College, and the NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine was established jointly with Imperial College, London. The NTU is now placed 11th globally in the World University Rankings, he said.

Earlier, addressing 15th convocation of NIT-T, Prof. Subra Suresh called upon the students to be an agent for positive change that also shapes their career and fills their life with purpose in the new digital era of the fourth industrial revolution.

He said compared to the previous three industrial revolutions, the first of which dates back to the 18th century, the fourth one has some unique features like including the rapid pace of change is unprecedented. It took 75 years for the telephone to be adopted by its first 50 million users, whereas only four years for Facebook and one year for WeChat to attract their first 50 million users, he said.

He explained that the fourth industrial revolution will increasingly have the opportunity to access and contribute to global information and data in real-time, to help society; it is expected to jump significantly in the next few years through wide availability of 5G telecommunication, he added.

Speaking on the occasion, NIT-T’s director, Dr Mini Shaji Thomas said as many as 1,721 graduands including 863 undergraduate, 760 post-graduates, 98 PhDs’ who received their degrees today.

She said NIT-T has already signed a MoU with ISRO and established space technology incubation centre by way of opening a special window to innovation, research, and development relevant to Indian space programes.

Dr Mini Shaji Thomas said NIT-T is the only NIT chosen to organise the leadership for the academic programme (LEAP), a unique initiative of the Union Ministry of HRD in collaboration NTU Singapore and IIIT, Chittoor.