IIT Delhi has identified the Department of Education and Knowledge Abu Dhabi (ADEK) as its partner for setting up its campus in the UAE’s capital city…reports Krishnan Nayar
Supplementing the ongoing efforts to set up a campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Abu Dhabi, it has been announced here that IIT Delhi is offering 500 fully-funded Ph.D. fellowships for international students, including eligible students from the Gulf.
This will mean students who graduate from the planned IIT campus in Abu Dhabi will have opportunities to pursue higher studies in India in the same streams and structures as they academically pursue in the UAE.
“The institute is coming up with a new curriculum in 2023,” IIT Delhi announced. The new curriculum will take into account the demands of its proposed overseas campuses. In addition to the UAE, offshore campuses of IIT are being planned in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Tanzania and Malaysia.
IIT Delhi has announced that its former Dean for Academics will be the coordinator for launching the Abu Dhabi campus. As reported by the Emirates News Agency (WAM) last month, IIT Delhi has identified the Department of Education and Knowledge Abu Dhabi (ADEK) as its partner for setting up its campus in the UAE’s capital city.
This followed the visit of a high-level team from the Indian institute to Abu Dhabi and extensive discussions with ADEK officials and other stakeholders in the project, Subhas Sarkar, the Minister of State for Education, informed the Lok Sabha, the lower House of India’s Parliament.
If present plans go according to schedule, the IIT Delhi’s Abu Dhabi campus will start its operations in 2024. The first batch of students will start their academic session there in September of that year.
At its 53rd Convocation in November, IIT Delhi announced: “IIT Delhi has been in discussions with the Department of Education and Knowledge, Abu Dhabi on various aspects of the proposed IIT in Abu Dhabi. A working group comprising faculty members at IIT Delhi and experts at ADEK has been constituted and this group has had several meetings. A team from ADEK visited IIT Delhi and familiarised themselves with various aspects of the functioning of an IIT. A team from IIT Delhi also travelled to Abu Dhabi and visited various universities and research institutions in the Emirate to get a sense of the research and education landscape in the region. The working group is engaged in developing a detailed project report and expects to finalise it in a few months.”