University of Birmingham celebrates 100 years of engagement with India

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(Free-Press-Release.com) August 26, 2009 -- University of Birmingham celebrates 100 years of engagement with India
Opens First Overseas Office in New Delhi

August 25, 2009, New Delhi The University of Birmingham, one of United Kingdom’s internationally acclaimed universities today announced a special educational initiative for India by opening its first overseas office in the heart of New Delhi with an aim to strengthen partnership with Indian institutions. The announcement was made at a specially organized event in New Delhi which was graced by Sir Richard Stagg, the British High Commissioner to India, leading academics and dignitaries from leading business and industry and distinguished alumni of University of Birmingham in India.

The Office in New Delhi has been established to help Indian students, develop networks with the Indian education sector and with Indian research organizations, leveraging the University’s hundred years of heritage, experience and ideas. Birmingham is internationally recognized for research into heart disease, obesity, hydrogen fuel technology and neuroscience.

The Vice Chancellor said the University was looking for responsible and sustained partnership with Indian institutions and Indian businesses and developing research collaborations that tackle important issues for India and support its community of alumni across the Indian subcontinent. Besides recruiting Indian students the university wanted to reach out to institutional partners to support the work of individual scholars and research groups, ensuring that the maximum impact is gained from their collaborative efforts.

Birmingham has a number of ongoing exciting research collaborations with several institutions across India. The University has partnered with the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies to look at how faith communities and faith based organisations have engaged with post-conflict situations in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The University’s Automotive Safety Centre is working with IIT Delhi to explore ways of reducing road traffic accidents in India. The centre has more than 40 years’ experience in traffic accident investigation and analysis and is particularly strong in the study of passenger car collisions.

Speaking on the occasion of the India Office launch, Vice Chancellor of the Birmingham University, Professor David Eastwood said, “The University of Birmingham is very excited and proud to be associated with India and its educational sector and to be able to make available its unique and international quality offerings at all three – the undergraduate, post-graduate and research - levels for mutual benefit. India is itself a global player in today’s world with considerable international prestige and recognition for economic performance and rapid progress, despite prevailing serious global recessionary conditions.”

Prof Eastwood also mentioned some of the illustrious Indian alumni - Radhakrishnan Srinivasan who completed an MSc in Industrial Metallurgy & Management in 1981, standing first in his class and winning the "British Non-Ferrous Metals Federation Award". He now works as Managing Director (Helicopter Complex) of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Bangalore. Another notable alumnus is Dr. U. R. Ananthamurthy who has written numerous novels in Kannada, his mother tongue, which received wide acclaim and eventually the Jnanapeeth Award (the highest literary award in India). Contd….







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The University had welcomed the first students from India to study for degrees in Mining and in Commerce in 1909, and since then has been the alma mater of a very large number of Indian students.

In celebration of the University of Birmingham’s more than sixty years of partnership with institutions and industries in India, Professor Eastwood announced that the University has also instituted scholarships of up to £ 5,000 in recognition of outstanding academic achievement, exclusively for Indian students, in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in any discipline.

The University of Birmingham would now – with facilitation from its India Office – focus on active and dynamic plans to promote and drive forward international quality and front-line research collaboration not only for Indian students, but also India’s own high quality research capabilities, especially in the science and technology domain as well as in the humanities subjects, international relations and education.

Research is given top priority in the University of Birmingham. The University is ranked amongst top 5 U.K. universities for quality of research and one that has international impact (www.hefce.ac.uk). The University attracts £85 million of funding and also belongs to the Russell Group in the UK and Universitas 21, both consortia of research-led universities whose mandate is to maintain the highest standards in research and knowledge transfer.

Birmingham was a founding member, in 1997, of Universitas 21 – one of the leading networks of international universities. The University of Delhi joined this group recently. U21 is tackling some of the big global issues in research and exploring innovative teaching patterns – distance-learning and joint doctoral training.

Website: www.international.bham.ac.uk

For Further Details / Information
Ms Aprajita Kalra Ms. Krishna Bhadra
Country Officer Director
University of Birmingham (India Office)
1007, Mercantile House
15, Kasturba Gandhi Marg J-1824 (LGF)
New Delhi – 100 001 Chittaranjan Park
India New Delhi - 110019
T: + 91 11 23706237 Ph.:011-4160 4340
F: + 91 11 23706243 Fax: 011-2627 3155
E: a.kalra@bham.ac.uk E-mail: dmainfo@gmail.com

W: bham.ac.uk www.publicrelationsdma.com