IIT Madras was recently admitted as one of the partners of the AOTULE Consortium (Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering), which will be opening up many opportunities for the faculty and students of IIT Madras to collaborate with their counterparts in the consortium of eleven premiere engineering universities in Asia-Oceania region, says a press release from the institution.
IIT Madras was invited to attend the 9th AOTULE Meeting and Conference at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in November 2014 as an observer, and was unanimously offered Membership in the Consortium. IIT Madras was represented at the AOTULE meeting by Prof. Sudarsan Padmanabhan, Advisor, Foreign Students, IIT Madras and Ms. Kavitha, Manager, Office of International Relations, IIT Madras.
At the 2-day Event, Deans of Member Institutions made brief presentations, generating discussion on issues such as student/ faculty mobility and engineering curriculum compatibility. Parallel sessions were organised for the students from the member institutions to present their research work. A primary emphasis in this meeting was to formulate a collective response to the “avalanche of change”, perceived and real, in higher education.
The AOTULE Consortium promotes inter-institutional co-operation through joint programmes including an annual Dean’s meeting, a student workshop and exchange of students and staff, in order to improve the quality of engineering education and research of the members.
It aims to broaden participating students’ perspectives through cross-cultural interactions. Consortium membership includes highly-ranked universities such as University of Melbourne, Tsinghua University (China), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Nanyang Technical University (Singapore), KAIST (Korea) and Tokyo Institute of Technology.