Dalhousie welcomed senior tutorial and innovation leaders from Tirupati, India, final week for a go to centered on turning shared financial priorities into analysis partnerships, startup connections, and trade collaboration.
Representatives from the Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati (IIT Tirupati) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Tirupati (IISER Tirupati) met with college leaders, researchers, deans, college students , and innovation companions throughout the go to in Halifax and Truro, which ran May 23-28.
Partnership momentum builds
The go to included the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Dalhousie and IISER Tirupati, an in-particular person Creative Destruction Lab session at Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management, the primary annual Tirupati–Dalhousie Innovation Research Roundtable, amongst different actions.
“When we encounter partners like IIT Tirupati and IISER Tirupati that have shared interests, shared values, and a similar motivation to work on international partnerships in the same ways we want to, we want it to be active — not just something that’s on paper,” says Matt Hebb, Dal’s vice-president, strategic engagement.
Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya, director of IISER Tirupati, and Dal President Kim Brooks signal an MOU.
Engagements at Dal coincided with a mission to Canada by India’s commerce minister and roughly 150 trade leaders for conferences centered on increasing Canada–India commerce and funding, together with in expertise, meals processing, clear power, and significant minerals.
Those similar areas are central to Dalhousie’s rising partnership with IIT Tirupati and IISER Tirupati. In February, leaders from all three organizations met in Mumbai, along with with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand for the launch of a brand new Canadian-India Talent and Innovation Strategy, Renewing Momentum Towards a Stronger Partnership.
The IIT Tirupati and IISER Tirupati delegation’s go to to Dal superior work on a tri-institutional Global Innovation Campus in Tirupati. The campus gives a shared platform designed to attach Canadian and Indian expertise, analysis, startups and corporations in areas of mutual power, together with clear power, essential minerals, digital techniques and AI, well being applied sciences, agriculture and superior supplies.
Dr. Okay. N. Satyanarayana (centre), director at IIT Tirupati throughout a welcome assembly.
Hebb says this part of figuring out and fostering areas of shared tutorial, analysis, and business pursuits is essential to constructing momentum because the companions search to develop a stream of lively initiatives.
Funding from the Indo-Pacific Scholarships and Fellowships for Canadians (IPSFC) program is already in place for at the least 14 Dalhousie researchers to journey to India for various durations of 1 to 6 months within the subsequent 12 months, he added.
First annual Tirupati-Dalhousie Innovation Research Roundtable
Last week’s analysis roundtable highlighted potential areas of collaboration in battery and power supplies analysis, engineering techniques and industrial processes, and plant biology tied to agriculture and environmental resilience.
“Researchers were able to get a direct view of what their counterparts are working on,” Hebb says.
Topics coated included:
- Solid State Hydrogen Storage, Purification Heating & Cooling, and Compression Systems
- Smart Systems for Sustainable Chemicals and Hydrogen Energy
- Battery Research
- Domain-Integrated and Human-Centric Intelligence – Driving Physical AI & Autonomous Systems
- Spray and Multiphase Flow Research
- Materials and Processes for Carbon Capture
- Climate Change Resilient Sustainable Agriculture Systems
These technical shows supplied insights into areas of potential future collaboration, including to initiatives already underway between Dal and IIT Tirupati stemming from a separate MOU signed in 2021.
Researchers in dialog.
Existing collaborative initiatives embody one in precision agriculture led on the Dalhousie aspect by Dr. Ahmad Al-Mallahi, Industry Research Chair and an affiliate professor in Dal’s Faculty of Agriculture, with a give attention to the event of nutrient estimation sensors and precision spraying mechanisms.
Dr. Tushar Sharma, an assistant professor within the Faculty of Computer Science, has one other lively collaboration, taking a look at safety and software program high quality assurance for Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud techniques.
Expanding tutorial collaboration
Last week’s conferences additionally superior discussions on new tutorial potentialities between Dal and its companions.
Dal and IIT Tirupati are discussing the potential for providing grasp’s degree programs on Battery Science to be co-taught by each universities.
Dalhousie University, IIT Tirupati, and IISER Tirupati are additionally collaborating on the co-creation of market-demand certificates applications in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Precision/Digital Agriculture, and Biomanufacturing. These applications are meant to handle rising workforce and trade wants in Canada and India whereas strengthening interdisciplinary coaching, trade engagement, and analysis-to-innovation pathways related with the broader collaboration.
In addition, Dal is growing separate joint doctoral applications with each universities.
Complementary strengths, shared imaginative and prescient
Both IISER Tirupati and IIT Tirupati had been established in 2015.
IISER Tirupati is the sixth institute within the community of Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) established by the Government of India to supply high quality training in fundamental sciences and for establishing state-of-the-artwork analysis amenities for frontline and reducing-edge analysis in science. It blends the foundational analysis of fundamental sciences with a extremely collaborative, tech-pushed ecosystem with applications designed for fast trade transition. Students there obtain early, fingers-on publicity to superior tools (like cell tradition areas and peptide synthesisers) with direct, approachable college mentorship.
These are rising institutions with tremendously excessive ranges of scholarship.
IIT Tirupati’s institutional strengths lie in its standing as an Institute of National Importance inside India’s prestigious IIT system, its quickly rising tutorial and analysis portfolio, and its sturdy basis of achieved college, skilled employees, and a vibrant pupil neighborhood. The curriculum closely prioritizes future-dealing with sectors, providing devoted applications in information science & synthetic intelligence, geospatial information science, and sustainable infrastructure engineering.
“These are rising institutions with tremendously excessive ranges of scholarship,” says Hebb.
The institution of IISER Tirupati and IIT Tirupati, situated inside 3 km of each other in Tirupati, creates a singular synergy of two premier instructional institutes within the nation, an intentional transfer by the state of Andhra Pradesh to nurture the area as a data hub.
Over time, the hope is for the Dal-Tirupati partnership to finally embody growth of a shared innovation campus in India, the place visiting researchers from all three institutions can simply collaborate.
Recommended studying: Dal partners with top Indian research universities to develop innovation campus (Feb. 28, 2026)
Turning concepts into ventures
The Indian delegation visiting Dal final week additionally obtained a glimpse into how the college is popping analysis into actual-world ventures throughout a dwell session with Creative Destruction Lab-Atlantic (CDL-Atlantic) .
Observers obtained to study how the non-revenue program pairs early-stage science and expertise startups with seasoned entrepreneurs and buyers to allow them to share insights on the right way to obtain development and construct scalable corporations.
“It’s individuals who’ve grown and scaled corporations to be $100-200-million corporations giving that form of perception to early-stage science and tech corporations, who are typically sturdy on the technical aspect however not on the enterprise aspect,” says Jeff Larsen, assistant vice-president innovation & entrepreneurship at Dal.
Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya, director of IISER Tirupati, on the CDL-Atlantic workshop.
Dal and the Tirupati institutions are dedicated to driving innovation and increasing market alternatives between Canada and India, a part of renewed efforts nationally on either side to deepen engagement between their nations.
“As a Canadian institution, we will think that this partnership aligns well with priorities of the federal government,” says Hebb.
“Eventually, that will mean benefits for Canadians beyond the academic and research spheres,” he says. “Economic activity, research impact, and talent development, to name a few.”
What’s subsequent
Next steps within the Dal-Tirupati partnership embody:
- In-person visits from Dal college members to Tirupati this month. Dr. Sharma, famous above, can be amongst these travelling. Separately, Dr. Shashi Gujar, a professor within the Faculty of Medicine and government director, Cancer Immunotherapy, Innovation & Global Partnerships, can be visiting India to advance talks round collaboration in well being applied sciences & biomanufacturing.
- Online workshops will proceed connecting researchers just about later this month. Dal’s Office of Strategic Engagement will convene a sequence of on-line collaborative analysis workshops to carry Dalhousie researchers working throughout the Global Innovation Campus’s recognized areas of analysis excellence collectively with their scholarly counterparts at IIT Tirupati and IISER Tirupati.
- A second name for purposes for Dalhousie’s Indo-Pacific Scholarships and Fellowships for Canadians mission is because of be launched in late summer time. The IPSFC gives funding for Dal college, analysis employees, and graduate college students to undertake analysis placements at key associate institutions — together with IIT Tirupati and IISER Tirupati — for durations of 1 to 6 months.
- Finally, Dalhousie is planning a return institutional mission to Tirupati this November, with a deliberate give attention to innovation, entrepreneurship, power storage, and AI.
