SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Visit to Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore,
Monday 26 November 2007

Visit to the International Relations Cell

Web page: http://www.iisc.ernet.in/ircell

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is the premier institute in its field in the country. It was conceived in 1896 by the inspired vision of the pioneering industrialist Jamsetji Tata (whose statue is raised in front of the magnificent main building).

It was established in 1909 as a Trust, became a Deemed University in 1957. The beautiful forested campus is located on land gifted by the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Raja Wodeyar.

IISc consists of two Faculties, one for Science and one for Engineering, with a total number of 2215 students (out of which 1342 are on PhD level), all supported fully by fellowships.

Furthermore IISc is divided into five divisions:
• Division of Biological Sciences
• Division of Electrical Sciences
• Division of Mechanical Sciences
• Division of Chemical Sciences; and
• Division of Physical and Mathematical Science

Besides, there is a Information Sciences section, that includes the:
• Supercomputer Education and Research Centre
• JRD Tata Memorial Library
• Digital Information Services Centre
• Bioinformatics Centre, and
• National Centre for Science Information

IISc is involved in academic partnerships with a large number of universities and research institutions all over the world. They include programmes for international student and faculty exchange, visiting scholar programmes, endowed professorships, and an Indo-French cyber university.

Swedish collaboration partners are the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm (students exchange since more than 10 years with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering); Karolinska Institutet Medical University (that signed a MoU with IISc in March 2006, more information); Göteborg University (Centre for Sustainable Development); and Chalmers Institute of Technology (more information below).

We were given a broad overview of IISc, and its international collaboration projects by Dr. Rahul Pandit (photo to the left). He is the  Chairman for the International Relations Cell, with an office in the main building of IISc, besides being Professor in Physics. In his presentation, he also informed us about the collaboration that IISc has with the industry. Ericsson is one of the companies involved in this.

Visit to the Department of Computer Science and Automation

Web page: www.csa.iisc.ernet.in

People we met:
• Prof. M. Narasimha Murty, Chairman for the department
• Prof. Y.N. Srikant
• Dr. Chiranjib Bhattacharyya
• Dr. Priti Shankar

With funding from STINT, the Dept. of Computer Science and Automation at IISc has initiated research collaboration with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg. We were now invited to meet faculty members by Prof. Srikant (photo to the right) who is in charge of the collaboration on the Indian side. He recently visited Göteborg in connection with planning for a new major research project, within the framework of this STINT grant for long term collaboration, involving several researchers in both countries (more information).
A number of workshops will also be held, as part of the same project. A bio-systems conference at IISc in January 2008, in which Devdatt Dubhashi, and K.V.S. Prasad from Chalmers will participate, and another joint workshop will be held in July.