French Firm Thales & IIT-B Together to Launch New Fellowship Scheme

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) which is one of the premiere engineering and research institute in India, has recently tied up with French aerospace company Thales for a fellowship program. In order to create a jointly supervised IIT Bombay-CNRS Ph.D. fellowship scheme, which will start from July 2016, the two parties have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

This tie up will further strengthen the relationship of the two counties in the line of scientific collaboration. The MoU includes cross-cooperation between the laboratories of the two countries to carry out research and development work for industrial operations. Under the fellowship scheme the students will get a chance to have a Ph.D supervisor in India and a co-supervisor in France. They can work in the advanced electronics and electromagnetics streams, while undergoing the research. They can also opt for complex system engineering during this period.

According to the IIT Director Devan Khakhar, this partnership would make sure that the meritorious students of the institute get a chance to have an experience of French technology and their advanced industrial environment to carry out their research work. This will allow them to know about the technology in detail and enhance their zeal to work on them when the right time comes.

According to the Chairman and Chief Executive of Thales, Patrice Caine, and “Promoting R&D as a way of fostering economic development is of mutual interest to both Thales and IIT Bombay, making this a preferred collaboration.” She further pointed out that Thales has joint collaborations and projects running with 50 universities in the world presently, and they are willing to extend it by the time.