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Global Reach
Discussions between UC Berkeley and IIT-Kharagpur were initiated
largely by IIT-Kharagpur alumnus Shailendra Kumar, senior
director of external relations for the UC Berkeley College of Letters
and Science. Kumar had earlier served as president of the IIT
Foundation, an alumni fundraising entity for IIT-Kharagpur, and his
efforts were a follow-up to the February 2007 India visit by UC
president Robert Dynes and a systemwide UC faculty delegation.
The collaboration was formalized in November 2007 with a return
visit by three Berkeley deans—from Letters and Science, Physical
and Mathematical Sciences, and Biological Sciences. Letters and
Science dean Mark Richards and IIT-Kharagpur biotechnology
department head Professor Satyahari Dey led the initiative at their
respective schools.
The model has been to focus on complementary research strengths
and begin with small steps. The schools identified two areas of
study—biofuels and health care biotech related to emerging or
neglected diseases—and in 2008, hosted 11 IIT-Kharagpur students
for an eight-week summer research session at Berkeley. The 2009
summer session hosted 18 students.
“It’s an experiment we’re conducting,” says current IIT Foundation
president Roy DaSilva. “Our ultimate goal is to get a true collaboration
going by bringing students over, having the professors here look at
the quality of students available, and come up with projects that
students and faculty at both schools can focus on.”
Biofuels and health care biotech offer clear examples of Bay Area-
India synergies, DaSilva explains. UC Berkeley, along with the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of
Illinois, have formed the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) under a
10-year, $500 million research grant from energy firm BP to develop
next-generation fuels; IIT-Kharagpur has established a
Biofuels Center of Excellence on its campus, and it is the only IIT
with an agricultural engineering department. The study of nextgeneration
fuels merges the developed world’s interest in energy
independence and climate change with immediate, real world applications
for India’s off-grid rural poor.
Similarly, DaSilva points to the potential good that research into neglected
diseases can do—and the potential market it represents in
India and other developing countries. Some of that research can be
difficult to undertake in the U.S., where the diseases in question may
never have existed or have, in a different form, been eradicated.
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