Hyderabad, October 02: In what appears to be an alternative for brain drain, Australia-based Deakin University has opened its Deakin India Research Initiative
(DIRI) here on Thursday. Victoria’s Minister for Skills and Workforce Jacinta Allen has formally opened the DIRI, which is the first university in the world to set up an office in India.
With the DIRI, the University intends to conduct research in material sciences, nanotechnology and biotechnology with some of India’s leading companies, research institutes and universities.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said: “With this kind of initiative, the students from various universities and researchers from the industry can be involved in collaborative programmes. They can always come back and become entrepreneurs in India.”
She also said that it is ‘a win-win situation’ for the participants, Indian partner (be it industry or institution) and Deakin and added that the University is will fund at least 30-lakh dollars to DIRI.
The University’s Director of research Peter Hodgson maintained that this is an innovative way of promoting ‘transnational research’.
Saying the DIRI was conceived after thorough research and after nearly 30 visits to India, he informed, “the DIRI model involves developing research institutions and Ph.D students will spend majority of their time working in India with a six-month stay down under for critical experiments and thesis writing.” He added that each student would have a Deakin as well as an Indian supervisor.
The Australian delegation hoped that they would be able to produce 25 Ph D candidates by the end of 2010.
Deakin University has already entered into a Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the University of Hyderabad, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Vimta Labs among others.
–Agencies–