UiT enters agreements in India to ensure top-level research

In April, UiT signed MoU's with seven universities and research institutions in India.

UiT's new partners in India:

Guru Nanak Dev University
Chandigarh University
University of South Asia
Lovely Professional University
Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi
Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad
Indian Institute of Technology, Jammu

The collaboration between UiT and Indian partners now includes fields such as energy technology, mathematics, machine learning, sustainability and environment, aquaculture, and research on the Arctic and climate change.

"It was clear that a number of Indian universities want to collaborate with UiT, both in education and research," says UiT's Vice-Rector for Research and Development, Jan-Gunnar Winther.

In April, Winther led a delegation from UiT that visited New Delhi and Amritsar. An important background for the visit was India's strategy for research in the Arctic, the recently concluded free trade agreement between Norway and India, and that Indian institutions are world leaders in certain fields.

"UiT signed several collaboration agreements with Indian universities, and it is a good starting point to strengthen the collaboration. India has an Arctic strategy that highlights many areas where UiT has expertise, e.g., in space research, climate, and health. It was very inspiring to gain better insight into the opportunities to develop the collaboration with Indian institutions," states Winther.

Technology collaboration between north and south

From 2011 to 2023, UiT researchers have published 105 scientific articles together with Indian colleagues. The research collaboration has made important contributions in the fields of health and environmental technology.

For example, the Nanoscopy group at UiT and IIT Delhi have collaborated in optics and photonics since 2015 in the INTPART project. Other partners in this project have been Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the research institution EMBL (Germany).

The collaboration has yielded good results in developing optical technology that can reduce costs and time spent in laboratory analyses.

Additionally, the IVT faculty at UiT has been involved in close collaboration with Indian partners for several years to develop sustainable and climate-adapted infrastructure. This includes projects where power grids for local communities in the Arctic that utilize renewable energy sources are developed.

In the projects SPRING and BRIDGE, researchers at IVT have found new methods to purify polluted water sources using enzymes and energy storage using microbes.

Summer schools and virtual courses have also been established at UiT that ensure short-term exchanges and joint teaching platforms for Norwegian and Indian students within engineering and technology subjects."

Kortnytt fra International Cooperation Section

Bredesen, Kim kim.bredesen@uit.no Rådgiver