With Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visiting India on Monday, promoting education ties between the two countries will be one of the top agendas of discussion. Around fifteen MoUs are going to be signed between Indian and Israeli universities in the field of research and promoting exchange of faculty between the two countries.
The MoUs that are supposed to be signed between educational institutions are ranged from general to unique. “The focus of general MoUs will be more towards faculty exchange. There are 15 MoUs in the pipeline between Israeli education institutions and some of the top Indian universities like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mumbai University and OP Jindal University among others,” said Minister Counsellor, Head of Public Diplomacy, Embassy of Israel, Ditza Froim.
“By unique MoUs, we mean the ones that are related to promoting joint research between the two countries. In 2013, a joint research programme was started between the two countries under which researchers from both nations joined hands to work in areas of Life Sciences and Chemistry. The idea now is to further strengthen the research programme in areas like agriculture, food security and entrepreneurship and give more grants to students” she added.
Faculty exchange between the two countries is also set to get easier.
Israel has been emerging as a favourite destination for Indian students who want to pursue higher studies and research in the field of Science. According to Israel’s Council for Higher Education, from 2014, till now 400 Indian students have been awarded post-doctoral fellowship under the joint research programme.
“We have seen a large number of Indian students come to Israel to pursue their research. Most of them come for Life Sciences and Chemistry because of the quality of research and infrastructure available to students. The Israeli government is also promoting this in a big way by granting funds to students along with the University Grants Commission,” said Senior Coordinator from Committee for Higher Education, Israel, Yoav Taubman.
“Apart from the research projects, Indian students come to Israel to pursue summer programmes. These are short term programmes available in various disciplines and for 17 of them, the universities award scholarships as well,” he added. The fully funded conflict resolution programme in Bar-Ilan University is one of the most popular programmes among Indian students.
[Source:- DNA]
