NEW YORK: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has signed a partnership with the government in India to provide support to outstanding students from India wanting to pursue doctorates in math, science and engineering at the university.
The agreement, for students on F1 visas, signed by CMU and India’s Science and Engineering Research Board, will provide $2.4 million in fellowships to deserving students from India, over the next five years. The fellowships will support a minimum of five Indian students each academic year, beginning in the fall of 2016.
CMU’s ties to India run deep, with 10 percent of the student body currently coming from the country. Forty-five current faculty members are of Indian origin, and the president of the university, Subra Suresh, was born and raised in Chennai and educated at IIT.
“We look forward to working with the board to develop the next great generation of scholars, scientists and engineers who will help address many of the 21st century human challenges,” Suresh said, in a statement.
“More than any other country on Earth, India is poised for significant growth in the coming years,” said Suresh, during his first official visit to India. “I think with Carnegie Mellon’s potential, and India’s huge global potential, there is opportunity.”
CMU recently hosted a massive gathering to a day-long meet on India on its campus, on July 4. Nearly 500 attendees gathered for ‘Integrated Intelligence: India,’ the largest gathering of Carnegie Mellon University alumni, parents and future students outside of the United States. At two panel discussions and a gala dinner, they traded ideas on smart cities, big data, and the promises and challenges of technology, according to a press release.
“In the next 10 years, a billion people in India are going to come online. And when a billion people come online, it’s going to be an event of planetary proportions,” said Lalitesh Katragadda, formerly Google’s country manager (products) in India.
Days before the CMU event, India’s prime minister Narenda Modi announced “Digital India Week,” calling for a digitally empowered society and knowledge-based economy. Weeks earlier, the prime minister announced an effort to build 100 smart cities.
One example would be Google Map Maker, created by Katragadda. Map Maker allows anyone to add geographical information to an interactive map. For example, all of Pakistan — including uncharted rural areas — was mapped by volunteers. Katragadda, who has a Ph.D. in robotics, carries with him a letter from the United Nations and the Pakistani military, which he received after Pakistan suffered floods in 2010.
“[The letter] says that of the 1.7 million people that were rescued in interior Pakistan, 800,000 would not have been rescued but for the maps that the users developed,” he said, at the meet on July 4.
Ramayya Krishnan, dean of CMU’s H. John Heinz III College and the William W. and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems, said that more than 400 million Indians are expected to migrate to cities over the next 30 years in search of economic opportunity. This is reflected in a worldwide movement to urbanization that affects every society on Earth.
The concept of smart cities boils down to people, said Anita Arjundas, managing director and CEO of Mahindra Lifespaces and president of its real estate sector.
Krishnan moderated the panel on smart cities, which also included panelists Sumit D. Chowdhury, founder of GAIA Smart Cities, and Devansh Jain, director of Inox Wind.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services, said that the combination of social media and speed of innovation is creating powerful technologies that are creating a proliferation of data.
“Facebook alone generates four times more data than the New York Stock Exchange every single day,” Chandrasekaran said. “And what will be the proliferation of data when the ‘Internet of Things’ comes will be even more exciting … There are so many applications for government and society. We can solve huge problems, such as in health care.”
Along with Chandrasekaran, the panelists included Banmali Agrawala, president and CEO of GE South Asia and parent of a current CMU student; Gary Fedder, associate dean for research for the College of Engineering and director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems; and Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, assistant professor of Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology.
