Main Page/Projects/Eureca/Eureca-Asian-Meeting-2008-08-07-IIITM-K/Meeting Minutes
From IIITM-k-wiki
Minutes of the Aug 7th 2008 meeting of the South Asian EURECA project partners held at the Indian Inst. of Information Technology and Management, Trivandrum, India.
Members present
- Prof. Sasi Punnekkat Malardalen University, Sweden (Chair)
- Prof. Rajeev Thottappillil Uppsala University, Sweden
- Prof. Uday Damodaran XLRI, India
- Prof. M P Chandrasekharan Amrita University, India
- Dr. Krishnashree Achuthan Amrita University, India
- Dr. P V Manoj Amrita University, India
- Prof. T V Prabhakar IIT Kanpur, India (via skype)
- Prof. K R Srivathsan IIITM-K, India
- Dr. Venkatesh Choppella (Convener)
Additional Faculty and staff from IIITM-K
- Prof. C S P Iyer
- Prof. M S Gopinathan
- Dr. Elizabeth Sherly
- Dr. Raj Mathew
- Mr. Guillaume Marceau
- Mr. David Mathews
- Mr. Pradeep Kumar
- Mr. Ajith Kumar
IIITM-K Invitee
- Dr. Vinay Dharmadhikari (Ex) Ministry of IT, Govt. of India
Talks and Presentations
Venkatesh Choppella, IIITM-K
- Introductions and welcome
Sasi Punnekkat, MDH, Sweden
Overview of EURECA
- Background of the project and the Erasmus Mundus programme
- Primary objectives of the project:
- Areas of focus
- Engineering
- Software Engineering
- Management
- Sustainable development
- Other areas could be added based on expressed interest of
partner institutions.
- Location of the EACEA website
- Requirements from each institute:
- Points of contact at each institute
- mobility allotments for each participating institute
Rajeev Thottappillil, Uppsala, Sweden
- Overview of Uppsala
- Emphasized interest in collaboration in Applied Sciences
and Engineering, eg., applied electromagnetics, renewable energy.
Sasi Punnekkat, MDH, Sweden
- Overview of MDH
- Emphasized interests in S/W Engineering
- Highlighted scope for industry tie-ups in s/w and other engineering at MDH (Volvo, Ericsson, ABB, etc.)
- Overviews of other EU partners (Sofia, L'Aquila, Paderborn)
K R Srivathsan, IIITM-K, India
- Overview of institute and faculty interests
- Computer Science, S/W Engg and Formal Methods
- Artificial Intelligence and soft computing
- Computational Science
- Social Computing (ecology, GIS, agri-informatics, education)
- Effort towards bringing India's Education and Research
- Network connection to Europe for use by EURECA partners
Krishnashree Achuthan, Amrita, India
Overview of Amrita University
- Emphasized already existing collaborations with North
America and Europe
- Large number of undergraduate and graduate students and
departments.
- Interests in Engineering Sciences.
Uday Damodaran, XLRI, India
- Overview of XLRI and its management programmes
- Programs in human resource development and management
- Scope for research in Finance, Marketing and other areas of management studies.
Signing of Annex 2 by IIITM-K
The meeting concluded at 4:30pm with IIITM-K signing the Annex 2 and handing it over the the Eureca overall coordinator Sasi Punnekkat.
Questions and Answers
There were several questions in the meeting regarding the programme. Here is a summary of them.
What is the credit system of each of the universities?
Answer: M P Chandrasekharan of Amrita suggested having a 16x16 matrix of conversion factors between credits at different universities.
What are the programmes in the participating universities that we can tie up with?
Answer: Each University presentation needs to have this aspect clearly stated. If not EURECA coordinator will try to obtain this info through institute coordinator.
What are the scheduled dates in the participating universities?
e.g, based on University schedules, July/Aug is mostly ruled out. For the semester starting Dec/Jan, faculty travel is difficult because of teaching commitments.
Answer: Students could move for the spring semester (Jan/Feb 2009).
Can the deadline for mobility (Apr 1 2009) be moved to 1st May, 2009?
Answer Unfortunately, no. it is tied to budget date, which is Apr 1st.
Can we use mobility for project work of final year students?
Answer: Yes, but duration has to be at least 6 months.
How do we reconcile the 4 month semester with a 6 month mobility duration of the student?
Undergraduate Courses at many indian universities are bound by semesters, which are typically 4 months in duration. 6 months might be too long for undergraduate students. What are students expected to do for the remaining months?
Answer: Undergraduates could combine this with a summer internship in the industry. This possibility needs to be explored by EU partners
Could the areas of interest for collaboration be expanded?
Answer: Yes, but the areas need to be listed by each partner institution and chaneled through the institute coordinator to the Eureca coordinator at MDH.
Should individuals have to submit proposals first to the Eureca specific selection committee?
Faculty Postdocs and PhD's who wish to travel.
Answer: Yes. If the the individual faculty
(,PostDocs, or PhD) and research groups seek out partners
and submit proposals with recommendations from hosting
partners, the chances of getting selected will be better.
How can students join Phd programmes across universities?
Answer: The two universities involved in the joint PhD programme must mutually sign a Memorandum of Understanding in order to run such a programme. Additionally, each university must have a facility for recognizing credits of its partner university.
Can the partners ask for additional support for teaching and designing specific courses?
Answer: Yes.
What are the milestones to get approval and funding from the Eureca project?
- Submission of annexe 2 by partner institution.
- Signature by MDH
- Agreement between MDH and European Commission (EC)
- Specific grant agreement between MDH and EC (for first year)
- within 40 days, 1st installment of the grant to the main
beneficiary. At this time, 70% of total budget will be released.
The above sequence of milestones implies that a partner institute will have to wait till Mid November before it receives money for the project.
What are the deadlines for committing mobility?
Each EURECA partner should have a contact person at their institution to handle the paper work.
Partners should aim for a Nov 1 deadline for committing names for student mobility. Enough time needs to be given for visas so that students can move in the beginning of Jan/Feb 2009.
A Dec 1 deadline for committing Faculty level mobility.
Faculty level mobility can start as early as Oct 1st 2008. However, all faculty committed to the mobility must begin their mobility assignment latest by Apr 1st 2009.
What is method for establishing a collaboration between the Asian and the EU partners
Answer: Each partner institute will initiate ideas and proposal with other partners.
