India and France agreed to collaborate in setting up a centre of excellence at IIT Rajasthan, hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Nicolas Sarkozy had discussed the proposal.
France will also help set up a joint laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, as part of efforts to increase cooperation in education and research.
Singh himself told reporters about the agreement on IIT Rajasthan, which recently began functioning from a temporary campus in Jodhpur, at a joint news conference with Sarkozy.
A French consortium will help the IIT set up the centre, which will work on technologies for health, renewable energy (especially solar energy), aerospace, mechanical engineering and technologies for art, conservation and heritage. The consortium is made up by French universities and other higher education and research institutions.
Also, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed for joint research and student exchange between institutions under ParisTech (which has some of the best French engineering and business schools) and the seven older IITs.
The ParisTech institutions include AgroParisTech, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, Chimie ParisTech, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique and Telecom ParisTech.
Another memorandum was signed to set up an “International Joint Laboratory” at the IISc, Bangalore, with the help of the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, France.
The French minister for higher education and research, Valerie Pecresse, met human resource development minister Kapil Sibal and discussed areas of cooperation.
Pecresse has already said her country aims to triple the number of Indian students studying at French universities by 2012. About 1,700 Indian students now study in France. The number of French students in India has remained below 100 for the past several years.
“France and India call for an increase in bilateral student exchanges and pledge to facilitate the academic stays of French students in India and Indian students in France,” a joint statement said.
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