IIT KGP joins hands with 2 Australian varsities for joint study programmes

Kolkata: IIT Kharagpur has recently signed agreements with University of Melbourne and University of Newcastle of Australia, for joint study programmes.

From the semester beginning in July, full time Dual Doctoral Program (DDP) will be rolled out in collaboration with University of Melbourne.

Meanwhile, the MoU with University of Newcastle is focused on joint academic and research programmes, joint supervision of doctoral and masters students and other exchange and knowledge sharing initiatives.

"We already have collaborations going with two Australian universities, Wollongong and Curtin, for Dual Doctoral Degree Programmes. We are delighted that University of Melbourne, the top ranked Australian university ,will now be our partner in grooming a very select group of doctoral students from our two countries. In the coming semesters, IIT Kharagpur will see several more dual degree programmes coming up with leading universities from around the world," said Prof Baidurya Bhattacharya, IIT KGP's Dean of International Relations.

In the pilot phase in 2017, a ten-member team from Curtin University had organised several workshops at IIT Kharagpur across various domains, which allowed research students to work under supervisors at both universities and earn dual doctoral degrees from the two institutions.

A similar collaboration has been struck with Wollongong and a research scholar from the Department of Mining Engineering, has been enrolled for the same programme.

The DDP students will have to go through a rigorous selection process and must spend at least a year at the partner institution.

Apart from doctoral programmes, the universities will be working on joint research problems.

"An industrially advanced nation like Australia and a leading technological university like IIT KGP, with its own self-contained campus, have a lot to offer to the growing Indian cities, as far as infrastructural developments in smart cities are concerned. We are looking forward to working on a project wherein we can develop a model for Indian smart cities," opined Bhattacharya.