BESU inks pact with Belfast university

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, November 19
Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU), Shibpur has tied up with Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB) in order to forge a partnership in technical education research.
Both universities will be exploring possibilities of collaborative research and other academic programmes. According to the agreement students from BESU will live in Belfast and study at the Institute of Electronics, Communication and Information Technology (IECIT), a world-class research centre at QUB built at a cost of $ 80 million. QUB is regarded as one of the top 20 research-intensive universities in UK while BESU has already been shortlisted by ministry of human resource development to become an Institute of National Importance.
“We are planning to have three research centres. The first one will be on water resource and would give special emphasis in arsenic mitigation. The second will be on computer science, IT and VLSI, while the third will deal with material sciences. We are still working on the modalities,” said N. R. Banerjea vice chancellor of BESU.
As per the agreement 20 fourth year students from electronics department of BESU will visit QUB next autumn and would get the opportunity to study and work at the IECIT. “This collaboration between BESU and Queen’s will work towards increasing collaboration between electronics engineers in India and Belfast,” said Chris Gibson, Pro Chancellor of QUB. While QUB will take care of all expenses of the students once they reach Belfast, BESU will arrange for sponsorship to take care of travel expenses. “The foreign exposure for the students will help them in various ways. If we do not get all the twenty students from BESU we would look at other engineering institutions for the right candidate for this programme,” added Banerjea.
QUB will also offer fellowships to three teachers of BESU who are yet to do their PhD. Under this unique ‘Split Students’ programme one year of PhD program will be done in BESU while the rest two will be in Belfast. QUB will pay the doctoral followed 12000 pounds per annum, which would cover their tuition fee and living expense. These research fellows will have one guide from BESU and the other will be from QUB.
BESU’s VLSI centre along with WEBEL and QUB will also offer an incubation program for the engineering students of BESU, which could also be partially funded by QUB.
Mou.Chakraborty@hindustantimes.com