Hyderabad: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) today signed a Record of Discussions (RoD) with the government of India for “the Project for Future Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) to Enhance Network Development with Scholarship of Japan (FRIENDSHIP) Phase 2”, a technical cooperation project.
The purpose of the project, according to a press release, is to establish a sustainable platform for academic and industrial collaboration between India and Japan at the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad IIT-H. JICA experts will be dispatched to the institute and several initiatives will be implemented for the same.
The project will include setting up a Japan Desk at the IIT-H, a student exchange programmes, supporting collaborative activities with Japanese educational and research institutes, and providing JICA research funds to enhance research and technology development and industrial collaboration between India and Japan.
Katsuo Matsumoto, chief representative of JICA India, said, “The relationship between JICA and IIT-H is steeped in legacy and has strengthened with time. Initially, in 2007, it was based on the commitment between the Prime Ministers of the two countries. Since then, we have been cooperating with IITH through various projects such as ODA loan for campus development, several technical cooperation projects, joint research projects and public-private partnership projects.”
Matsumoto added that the FRIENDSHIP project is one of the core activities between JICA and IIT-H, which supports personal and organizational interaction at various levels of faculty members, industry experts and students in the field of science and technology by providing opportunity and facilitation.
The previous phase of the technical cooperation project was implemented to enhance the research network between IITH and first-rate higher education institutions/industrial clusters of Japan through the interaction of human resource in educational and research activities between IITH and Japan, the release added.
Through the project, several quantitative achievements were observed such as 116 grantees being provided scholarship, 271 faculty members were exchanged between Japan and IIT-H, 32 MOUs signed between IIT-H, and Japanese academic institutions and 15 MOUs are signed between IIT-H and Japanese industries.
The terminal evaluation of the project is available in the following link. https://www2.jica.go.jp/en/evaluation/pdf/2020_1102952_3_s.pdf.