London's Imperial College to open hub in Bengaluru: President Hugh Brady

NEW DELHI: London's Imperial College is set to establish its Indian hub in Bengaluru to strengthen scientific, education and innovation partnerships between India and the UK, college President Hugh Brady said. The hub called "Imperial Global India" will be established as a Liaison Office and will focus on strengthening and co-creating new research partnerships between Imperial and leading universities and institutes in India, he said.

It will also act as a communication channel to form closer ties with industry and policymakers and provide a platform for greater collaboration in innovation between India and the UK, he added.

Sharing the development in an interview with PTI, Brady said Bengaluru is fourth in the series of Imperial Global network hubs following Singapore, San Francisco in US, and Accra in Ghana. He clarified that the hub will not be a branch campus of Imperial College, London which has been ranked second best university in the world and top in the UK in the latest QS World University rankings.

New hubs for collaboration

"We are opening a number of global hubs such as in San Francisco, Singapore and Accra as the West African hub...they are not branch campuses, what they look to do is to help us work in countries where we have a strong track record of collaboration, so that we can build on that to build larger research programmes of scale in win-win areas. "....particularly focused on emerging technologies, allow us to create a bridge between exciting innovation ecosystems, so you get bilateral flow, bidirectional flow of talent and ideas and of capital," he said.

Through the hub, Imperial will seek to develop joint projects that align with the UK-India Technology Security Initiative in areas ranging from telecommunication, AI, quantum, biotech and critical minerals.

The hub initiative in India will be spearheaded by Professors Sanjeev Gupta and Elena Dieckmann. Gupta is an earth scientist who has researched the role of rivers on early civilisations in the Ganga basin and quantifying groundwater depletion with researchers from IIT Kanpur. Dieckmann's research interests lie in biomaterials and the circular economy and is currently working with researchers in India to repurpose waste solar panels for new architectural applications.

Opportunities for Indian students

"Both academicians will spend time in India to engage with partners and collaborators. We think by having a presence on the ground in terms of the hub, that it allows us to develop better relationships and give Indian students a better sight of the opportunities that are available to them to visit Imperial and vice versa for our UK students.

"But I think given that well over half our population are postgraduate and indeed a quarter of all of our students are PhD students, we are particularly excited by the prospect of developing more collaborative PhD programmes in areas where India has great strength and really impressive momentum and which are already priorities for Imperial and the UK," he added. Imperial Global India will be launched at an event in Bengaluru on May 21. The launch event will convene leaders from across academia, business, industry and policy from India and the UK.