Thursday, July 21 2005 17:44 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: The University of California (UC) and four other US universities will join with Indian institutions led by AMRITA University to what they said enhance science and engineering education in India over a new satellite e-learning network.

Funding for US participation in the programme will come from QUALCOMM Incorporated, Microsoft Corporation and Cadence Design Systems, Inc, according to a statement in Bangalore.

Education research and corporate representatives were on hand today in Washington for the signing of a three-year Memorandum of Understanding, timed to coincide with the official visit for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the United States, the statement said.

Under the agreement, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, as well as Carnegle Mellon University, Cornell University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Case Western Reserve University, will encourage engineering faculty to spend a quarter or semester of their sabbatical at AMRITA University in Tamil Nadu.

AMRITA will extend use of its e-learning centre, making it possible to be beamed over EDUSAT, a satellite launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation to transmit educational programming to multiple educational institutions throughout India, it was stated.

Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, who represented UCSD at the signing ceremony said, "We expect some of the very best and brightest students participating in this programme to come to the US for post-graduate education, giving US technology leaders such as Microsoft and QUALCOMM access to more world-class engineers. So programmes like this offer benefit to India and the United States alike."

Other Indian partners in the project include the Government of India and the country's Department of Science and Technology.

Three US research centres are partners to the agreement, UC's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and Carnegle Mellon's CyLab. The programme will expose US faculty to potential research partnerships in India, and could also help reverse the recent decline in applications to US engineering schools from India and other countries, the statement added.