Australia helps India plug brain drain
Mon, March 31 2008
By Neena Bhandari
Like many other Australian universities, while Deakin has collaborations with Indian universities, “the Deakin India Research Institute (DIRI) will be the first standalone research institute in India,” says the University’s vice-chancellor Sally Walker.
“We are absolutely committed to India. We were the first Australian university to set up an office in Delhi 11 years ago,” Walker told IANS at the University’s Burwood campus in Melbourne.
“The main advantage of this institute will be that it will stop Indian students from going overseas and will also attract Indian scientists back to India as research supervisors.”
“We are awaiting final permission for funding from the Karnataka state government and the government of India. The infrastructure will be in place sometime this year and enrolments will begin next year. We’ll take 100 students to begin with and then work up to 500,” Walker adds.
Some students from DIRI will come to the Geelong campus in Victoria to study part of the time, say for six months, but the bulk of their time will be spent studying in India. Out of the 23,500 students currently enrolled at the university, 5,000 are international students and 1,000 of them are from India. The popular courses are business, biotechnology, engineering and information technology.
Deakin is in top of the middle group of Australian universities. Pallavi Rao from Manipal, Karnataka, who is doing a double masters degree in professional communication and writing and literature, says: “As a postgraduate student, I got an unexpected amount of options in doing my course and more exposure and experience in my area. Melbourne is the city to study arts, unless of course, one can afford New York or London.”
Rao, who has volunteered as a peer support leader for new international students, chose Deakin because it provided a course “structured exactly around the material I was hoping for. The staff is not only of a high calibre in terms of experience and knowledge, but also has been exceptional in their support and encouragement, opening up multiple avenues in work experience.”
Coming from a quintessentially conservative small town, the move to Melbourne has been “a drastic but exciting one.” While she intends to get some solid work experience in Australia for now, as an aspiring author, Rao says, “there is no doubt in my mind that my final destination will be India.”
Nishar Hameed came to Australia only nine months ago to do a Ph.D in Polymer nanomaterials at the University’s Centre for Material and Fibre Innovation (CMFI). It was while doing his M.Phil in Kottayam, Kerala, that he got attracted by the works of his current supervisor at Deakin, Qipeng Guo.
Hameed says, “I would like to return home after acquiring a few years research experience here on completion of my PhD.”
Enthusiastic about the university’s evolving relationship with India, Walker says, “Indian students here enrich our environment.” Deakin has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with India’s major biotechnology company, Biocon, which will help facilitate the establishment of DIRI. The MoU will also bring the two institutions together to work on a number of projects, including the establishment a mammalian cell bio-processing facility.
Way back in 1893, Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second prime minister after whom the university is named, had recognised that Australia and India would develop close working relationships. His prophecy is coming true.
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