This one’s a great initiative that facilitates research collaborations between Indian and American institutes.
In the second round of the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative awards, eight Indian institutes will partner with American counterparts to further research in various areas. The awards are instituted bilaterally by India and the United States to strengthen collaboration and build partnerships between American and Indian institutions of higher education.
Each project gets an award of approximately $250,000 that can be utilized over a three year period. Besides the obvious objectives, one of the aims of the award is to help develop junior faculty at the collaborating institutions. That is something that Indian institutes would truly benefit from.
For India-led partnerships, the list in this round of awards reads like this :
1. Annamalai University partnering with Tennessee Technological University on a project that maps uncertainties and risks in Tamil Nadu’s energy futures.
2. Assam Agricultural University to collaborate with Washington State University on a project that will engineering ADP – Glucose Pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) enzymes for heat tolerance in rice.
3. Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women to partner with University of Minnesota, Minneapolis on project titled “A sustainable ‘response to intervention’ model for successful inclusion of children with disabilities”.
4. National Institute of Technology, Trichy to partner with University of Nevada, Las Vegas to create a cognition-based curriculum development tool for emerging areas of computer engineering and management studies to improve the teaching-learning process.
Among partnerships that U.S.-based institutions will lead are:
1. Harvard School of Public Health collaborating with St. Johns Research Institute, Bangalore on a nutrition initiative.
2. Ohio State University coming together with Aligarh Muslim University to train the next generation of STEM faculty at higher education institutions in India.
3. University of Massachusetts, Amherst joining hands with University of Pune on a project to titled “Inclusive Universities: Linking Diversity, Equity and Excellence for the 21st Century”.
4. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill collaborating with Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore to research advancing sustainability research and education in India.
The awards were announced first in 2009 with each government pledging an equal sum of $5 million. The next request for proposals for fresh grants will be announced in July 2013.