Courtesy Visit by Director of National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India (March 12, 2015)
Prof. Swapan Bhattacharya, Director of National Institute of Technology, Karnataka (NITK), India, came to the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University for a courtesy visit. He was accompanied by Prof. M B Saidutta（Dean Alumni Affairs and Institutional Relations), Prof. K Chandrasekaran（Dean Research and Consultancy) and Prof. Katta Venkataramana（Dean Academic).
The institute was established in 1960 as a public engineering college at Surathkal. In 2002, it was elevated to the status of a National Institute of Technology (NIT). The NITK has 14 departments and 11 support centers with about 200 faculty members, 5,500 students. NITK is consistently rated amongst the best NITs, and has good industry relations due to its location in Karnataka whose capital is Bangalore - the Silicon Valley of India.
During the visit to Japan, the delegation visited several universities including Kagoshima University and Kumamoto University, which are its partner universities in Japan. They made a courtesy visit to meet Vice-President for International Relations at Kyoto University headquarters on March 11.
As for the visit of March 12, 2015, Dr. Akira Igarashi, Professor of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute and the Cooperating Chair of the Department of Urban Management, escorted the delegation. He has been engaged in the research collaboration with Prof. Katta Venkataramana, who enrolled as a doctoral student and graduated from the Graduate School of Engineering. The delegation from NITK designed this official visit with a serious intent of creating a wider range of engineering between the two institutes.
At the courtesy visit to Dean of the Graduate School Engineering, Prof. Bhattacharya extended his thanks to Dean Shinzaburo Ito. Prof. Hitoshi Mikada, Vice Chair of the Committee for International Academic Exchange, Prof. Shinji Hasebe on behalf of the Division of Industrial Chemistry and Prof. Tomomi Yagi on behalf of the Division of Global Engineering joined the meeting. They discussed mutual and specific interests for the purpose of pursuing the possibility of academic and student exchanges. They reached an agreement to create future official collaborative plans and formulate an MOU after forging valuable relationships.
At present, there is no faculty level MOU in the Graduate School of Engineering with India. Therefore the School desires further progress in the development of an agreement.
| The delegation of NITK | The Graduate School of Engineering researchers |
| Group photo | Dean Ito (Left), Director Bhattacharya |