By Monica Friedlander

In a bold step to develop worldwide research collaborations while tackling some of the greatest global challenges of the century — energy and health care — UC Berkeley has launched a new partnership with one of India’s leading institutions of higher education: the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. What sets this program apart from others is the way it was conceived. Spearheading this initiative are not faculty members but a group of students who will act as ambassadors for the program.

“We decided to grow the program in an unusual way,” said Mark Richards, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science during a reception welcoming the students. “We thought the most straightforward way to make this happen is directly through the students. They will explore research opportunities here with the understanding that these projects will continue when they return and in the process grow faculty bonds.” Richards, along with Geoff Owen, dean of the College’s Biological Sciences Division, laid the groundwork for the collaboration during a trip to India last November.

The inaugural group of 11 exchange students arrived on campus on May 26 for an eight-week summer research session. Most of them did not have time to get over their jet lag before rushing to join their mentors in labs across campus.

“I’m so excited, I already worked two days in the lab,“ said Varada Vilas Bal, a bubbly fourth-year physics student working in the field of photovoltaics — a technology that converts light into electricity. This is her first trip to the United States, yet three days into her experience she had already made up her mind to return to Berkeley for her Ph.D. The same effusive enthusiasm comes through from all students. “I’m looking forward to the exchange of ideas and discussions with some of the best minds in the world,” said fellow student Suman Bikash Mondal.

The initiative hopes to build on the experience of this first round of students to develop major lasting collaborations within the next two years. During the next phase, students from Berkeley will travel to India, with faculty following in their footsteps with collaborations of their own.

IIT Kharagpur, the largest and oldest of India’s seven Indian Institutes of Technology, was chosen for this collaboration because of its high-tech profile (the Indian government named it as the lead national organization in biotechnology), its rich academic environment, top-notch students, and its institutional knowledge base in areas such as energy, medical science, and plant genetics. Kharagpur’s students, Dean Richards said, “are known in the U.S. for being universally brilliant,” due to the institute’s exceptionally competitive admission policy: only one in 100 students who apply are admitted.

Like Berkeley, Richards noted, IIT Kharagpur is a world-class public university. “As a premier public institution, Berkeley has a natural affinity with IIT in terms of our culture. We felt that personally when we visited IIT Kharagpur, both intellectually and culturally.”
 
The collaboration focuses on research in the cutting-edge areas of clean energies (particularly biofuels) and neglected diseases. The program was made possible in large measure by the recent launch of two large multidisciplinary centers based at U.C. Berkeley that promise to make seminal contributions to science in the 21st Century.

The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a large consortium funded by a 10-year, $500-million grant, focuses on energy biosciences research to devise solutions to global energy challenges and reduce the impact of fossil fuels on global warming.

“While there’s no single solution,” said EBI Director Chris Sommerville, “the general solution is to look at all possible clean and renewable resources. Our focus is the application of modern biology to the energy sector.”

Sommerville emphasized the need for endeavors like EBI to engage in global partnership. “Our mission cannot be accomplished in isolation,” he said. “We have here at Berkeley a unique opportunity to partner with an institution in a country that has substantial share of the world energy market. These are world problems, not regional problems, and we need to approach them at that level.”

The other key project is the Berkeley Alliance for Global Health initiative, a recent alliance between U.C. Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, which aims to address large-scale public health issues, focusing in particular on fighting drug-resistant diseases such as TB and malaria, rampant in many parts of the world.

“There’s a great urgency to it, as we have no defense against these diseases at the moment,” said Dean Owen, pointing to the fact that 100,000 people in India alone have fallen pray to the extremely drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, XDR TB.

“These diseases affect the whole world as the ease of travel makes everyone vulnerable,” he added. “We need to develop and grow relationships with institutions in other countries. The collaboration with IIT Kharagpur is a perfect marriage.”

Another key to the success of this project is its strong support from IIT Kharagpur alumni at Berkeley. One of them, Shail Kumar, senior director of external relations in the College of Letters and Science’s College Relations Office, has worked intensely with Richards and Owen on launching this program.

Finally, Berkeley has a long history of collaborating with India and developing related programs. Some 70 India-related courses are taught here every semester, and a large number of faculty members have projects in India. “With India’s rising reputation right now, lots of universities are jumping on the bandwagon,” said Raka Ray, director of the Center for South Asia Studies at Berkeley. “But here we have a longstanding collaboration with India that started many decades ago.”

“And what better way to promote true collaborations,” she added, “than to have here the best and brightest minds working together to make the world a little more disease free and a little less dependent on fossil fuels?”