Sunday, December 14, 2008
Hyderabad: In a bid to build an academic partnership between universities in India and U.K., particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence and IT, U.K.-based institutions are all set to tie up with IIIT (Hyderabad) and IIT (Chennai) to provide a platform for long term academic and research.

Identifying the need to focus on specific fields of IT such as Artificial Intelligence, this initiative was taken up by UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), headed by Derek Wyatt, UK Member of Parliament and was discussed at the first India-U.K. Round Table conference on Artificial Intelligence last week. As per the objective of the collaboration, universities from the U.K. that are mainly research-based will work in tandem with institutions such as IIIT Hyderabad to explore relevant fields of IT.


“Here in India, the industry is service-based. As and when a student passes out of college, they are picked up by major IT companies. As a result, there is not much research on IT happening here. Where as in the U.K., students stay on till they complete their Ph.D and a lot of research work is carried out. What we are doing is getting the service component from India and the research aspect from U.K. so that there is specific focus on development of IT in both the nations,” says Mr. Wyatt.

With IIIT from Hyderabad being identified as a major research centre, Mr. Wyatt says that a curriculum will be designed from both U.K. and India and in due course of time, the collaboration will facilitate student and faculty exchanges. “With this, students will have a chance to share their experiences,” adds Mr. Wyatt.

Moreover, the initiative will be taken to the schooling level as well. Groups of schools from U.K. and India will connect with each other to share knowledge and classroom experiences. Areas such as development, culture and education will be the key aspects on focus.