The Chancellor's column

November 2009

International Jewels: IITB-Monash Research Academy in Bombay

Last month I reported on my trip to our campus in Kuala Lumpur. To round out my journey through our international campuses I’ll tell you this month about the establishment phase of our Research Academy in Mumbai, India, before turning next month to the progress at our campus in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In early October I joined the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ed Byrne, and other Monash staff, for a very special day in Mumbai – a symposium to celebrate the first year of operation of the IITB-Monash Research Academy and to showcase the Academy to industry leaders and to the media.

The brainchild of the former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Larkins, and the Dean of Engineering, Professor Tam Sridhar, the Academy is a partnership between the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay and Monash University.

In its first year the Academy has made excellent progress. It already enrolled more than thirty eager research candidates, with an ultimate aim to house 300 PhD students. Each student is jointly supervised by at least one academic from IITB and one from Monash University, with the option of a joint supervisor from an industry partner.

Academy students are headquartered in Mumbai but they undertake six to twelve months training at Monash University in Australia. This experience not only allows students to develop the international acumen necessary for a career in business or science, but also gives them the opportunity to use the unique infrastructure available at Monash, such as the electron-microscope facility, the stem cell laboratories and the nearby Australian Synchrotron.

The Academy is focused on six fields of research. Along with a single example of each, these are:

1. Energy (cost effective carbon capture and storage);
2. Climate (computer modelling of rainfall and drought);
3. Water (new nanopore membranes for more efficient desalination);
4. Health (large scale bioreactors for producing safe synthetic blood supplies);
5. Infrastructure (use of mobile phones to provide irrigation and fertilization information to farmers); and,
6. Computer modelling (designing low-power computer data centres)

The establishment of the Academy has been financially supported by the Australian government, Monash University and five founding industrial partners: Infosys, Shell, BHP Billiton, CSIRO and the Australian Stem Cell Centre. Why such broad backing? Because they see the benefit of collaborative research that transcends borders and exercises the best minds of today on the technological and scientific challenges of tomorrow.

This arrangement is of great benefit, and not only to the Academy’s students. Monash benefits from a talent pool that contributes to our research effort. IITB benefits because its highest achieving students are attracted to undertake further study in a domestic research institute rather than join the brain-drain to the USA or Europe.

The scientific agenda of the Academy is advised at the highest level by a Research Advisory Council chaired by Mr Narayana Murthy, Founder and Chairman of the giant Indian software company Infosys, ably supported by the Deputy Chair, Professor Ramesh Mashelkar, President of the Indian National Science Academy. The advice of this Council has been crucial to the early success of the Academy.

The IITB-Monash Research Academy is an example of international collaborative research that will have a positive global impact by addressing challenges that affect both our countries. Further, the Academy exemplifies how to create an effective innovation process: start with bright students, give them a superb education, set them meaningful challenges and provide them with the resources they need.

The students who graduate from the Academy will be technological leaders of the future. They will exhibit a good deal of the social and technical innovation skills that underpin what Ramesh Mashelkar refers to as Ghandian Engineering, a determination to do “more with less for more”, a contemporary approach to engineering that has emerged from the special needs of the Indian economy.

The Academy’s progress so far offers encouragement for all of those interested in furthering relations between Australia and India, and who believe, like I do, that there is no greater tool for the creation of a better world than education and research.

Dr Alan Finkel AM (BE 1976, PhD 1981)
Chancellor
Monash University