Recently, India's Government has undertaken several initiatives aimed at internationalizing the national higher education system. The Indian New National Education Policy implemented since 2020 clearly reflects the efforts of the country to conduct large-scale reforms. The University Grants Commission (UGC), the main regulatory body of the Indian higher education system, issued in 2022 Regulations on academic cooperation between Indian and foreign higher education institutions for the implementation of twinning, joint degree and dual degree programs. Indian colleagues consider Russian universities to be among the first candidates for cooperation.
For many years, NSTU NETI has been interacting with Indian representatives of higher education. A striking example of cooperation is the work with the University of SASTRA.
In May 2022, Faculty of Automation and Computer Engineering signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the School of Computer Science of SASTRA University included in the list of universities recommended for cooperation in India. This is a continuation of the more than three-year history of joint Russian-Indian work.
The initiator and the locomotive of this cooperation is Maxim Bakaev, Candidate of Sciences (Engineering), Associate Professor of the Department of Automated Control Systems, Head of the Department of Data Collection and Processing He says
"Our cooperation with SASTRA University began, one might say, with a happy accident. Its employee Elakkia, a young PhD in IT, was looking for partners to submit a grant application for the RFBR competition for the BRICS countries. She found my e-mail on the website of one of the specialized conferences where I was a co-organizer and sent me an offer.
Unfortunately, our trilateral application for a BRICS grant (Russia, India and Brazil) did not receive support. But we were successful with another grant, Russian-Indian, which we applied at the same time. The grant was allocated for work on the recognition of sign languages, and the head was Professor Mikhail Grif
At the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic, we managed to visit SASTRA University. It is located in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in the city of Thirumalaisamudram. In addition to discussing the work on the grant, we gave lectures to Indian colleagues, and they showed us the modern laboratories of their university. Interestingly, the attitude of Indians toward Russians is very positive — both politically and personally, although there are not so many of our compatriots in Tamil Nadu. I believe that cooperation with India, one of the countries that are sincerely friendly to us, is very promising. Unfortunately, the planned semi-annual visit of an Indian graduate student to us has not yet taken place due to pandemic restrictions.
To date, the work on the grant has been successfully completed, but research and educational cooperation with SASTRA University has continued. Our universities exchange data sets on sign languages, a joint publication has been published in an international journal. At the invitation of an Indian colleague, I conducted a webinar with her students on the quality of data for machine learning.
One of our current joint projects is the UNAI (Universal Augmented Interaction) workshop within the ISMAR 2022 international conference (A* rating) dedicated to augmented reality. Last year, our UNAI 2021 workshop attracted authors from Austria and Canada. Among the NSTU NETI organizers was Olga Razumnikova, Doctor of Biology, Professor of the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of the Humanities Faculty. We hope that UNAI 2022 will also be successful, and the development of scientific ties around the world will continue."
The list of 230 Indian universities recommended by the Ministry of Education of India for cooperation with foreign universities is posted in the section International activities of the NSTU NET website, page Partners.