Meeting between the University of Oxford and Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR)

Meetings
— Recent Activities

A web-meeting was organized between the University of Oxford, UK, and Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee on March 01, 2022 to discuss opportunities of collaborations between the two institutes. Prof Katherine Blundell, Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University and a Research Fellow at St John’s College; Prof P Arumugam, Dean of International Relations; Dr Shantanu Wahal, Executive Officer-International Relations at IIT Roorkee and Ms Marwa Ahmed, Program Manager-INDOX participated in the meeting.

Prof Blundell gave a brief description of the activities performed under India Oxford Initiative (INDOX) program at the University of Oxford. She also discussed how proposals for collaboration are evaluated at INDOX and the decision-making done by the Strategy Board. Prof Arumugam besides giving a brief history of IIT Roorkee and also elaborated on the research projects taking place in various departments at IIT Roorkee. He gave a snap-shot of various activities that are planned to commemorate of 175th year anniversary at IITR, and explained how some of these activities could seed a long-term partnership between two institutes.

One of the important initiatives which was discussed in the meeting was facilitating student mobility between the University of Oxford and IIT Roorkee. The group discussed different modes and models of student exchange and it was decided that possible mobility related activities can be outlined in a proposal. Following are the key take-aways from the meeting-

  • A proposal for short-term student exchange between IIT Roorkee and Oxford University to be submitted to the INDOX’s Strategy Board.
  • IIT Roorkee and INDOX to work on developing the template or model proposal based prior case studies.
  • IIT Roorkee’s SPARK internships for international participants to be advertised on INDOX website. As a follow-up a webpage for SPARK was created on INDOX website
  • Other areas of partnership between the University of Oxford and IIT Roorkee to be explored following the submission of proposal for student exchange.