4 November 2011

Principal to lead delegation to India

Professor Pete Downes, Principal of the University of Dundee, will next week lead a delegation travelling to India to increase research collaboration, academic exchanges and recruitment.

University representatives will visit a number of major Indian cities to establish or build on existing relationships with leading institutions and organisations across the country while Professor Downes will undertake a number of high-profile engagements in Bangalore and Delhi.

He will travel to Bangalore on Tuesday, 8th November to visit Alliance University and RV College of Engineering - two of the top universities for business and engineering in India.

Professor Downes will sign a new agreement with Alliance to develop joint research programmes and courses in accounting, finance, economics, international business and engineering, and complete a similar deal relating to computing and engineering with RV College of Engineering.

The Principal will also visit the Bangalore headquarters of Wipro, a major Indian IT services company that employs more than 120,000 people worldwide, and the Indian division of NCR. Both companies are partners of the University’s School of Computing.

The following day will see Professor Downes fly to Delhi to take part in a Scottish universities alumni event together with heads of other Scottish universities, senior diplomats from the UK’s High Commission in India, and the Scottish Education Minister, Michael Russell MSP.

On Saturday, 12th November, he will give an invited speech on cultivating research at the prestigious Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Education Summit as a part of a mission organised by the Scottish Government.

Professor Downes said that it was essential for the University to build closer collaborations with emerging markets such as India.

'By doing this, the University can act as Dundee’s gateway to the world,' he said. 'Increased ties will lead to more students flowing between Scotland and India, research collaborations and academic exchanges. In the longer-term, these partnerships could act as a springboard for commercial links in high-growth sectors including business, engineering, life-sciences, animation and design.'

Whilst Professor Downes attends the events in Delhi and Bangalore, other members of Dundee staff will be visiting the cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Cochin to further raise the profile of the University.

India has the second largest English speaking population in the world after the USA. This, together with long-standing cultural and personal ties, makes India a prime candidate for collaboration. India is now the world’s tenth largest economy, and growth of 8.5% is predicted for 2011.

Scotland has the opportunity to develop productive links with India to develop new markets for goods and services, and Scottish exports to the country are already around £200million a year and growing.

The University of Dundee has a long-standing partnership with the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) in Pune. Dundee signed a range of agreements with MIT Pune last year, under which students begin courses in India and then travel to Scotland to study at Dundee.

The University and MIT Pune are developing joint masters courses in product design, design ethnography and international business, and MIT will also sponsor staff PhDs at Dundee.

Notes to editors:

The University of Dundee is one of the world’s top 200 universities (Times Higher Education and QS, 2011), first in Scotland and fifth in the UK for student experience (Times Higher Education, 2011), and ranked top University in the world for pharmacology research (Thomson Reuters, 2010). The University has been described as 'one of the success stories of British higher education' (Sunday Times, 2011)

The University has an annual turnover of around £200million and is home to more than 3000 staff and 17,000 students from more than 84 countries. It has an international reputation for research excellence - particularly in the life sciences and laboratory based medicine.

Scottish participation in the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Higher Education Forum is supported by Scottish Development International.

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Grant Hill
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University of Dundee
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