Oregon State University President Extends Collaboration Hopes with Indian Universities, Inspired by IIT Kanpur
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Back then, IIT Kanpur had no idea how to deal with with young women, so we did face some issues with settling in, but it got better with time,’ says OUS President and IIT Kanpur graduate.
OSU President Jayathi Y. Murthy revealed ambitious plans for collaboration with premier Indian institutes such as Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) and Indian Institute of Information Technologies (IIIT) on issues like artificial intelligence and sustainability in New Delhi. OSU is sending a delegation to assess potential collaboration with IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Madras, IIT-Hyderabad, and IIIT-Hyderabad, exploring synergies and joint possibilities between their research programs.
According to Murthy, these engagements were strategically important to facilitate academic collaboration and further research in global challenges, especially in the areas of sustainability and climate research. She said that OSU and the Indian institutes have strong interests in solving environmental issues related to air quality in urban centers and the effects of wildfires on agriculture. While OSU tackles such rural issues as wildfire management, affecting the Oregon wine industry, IIT-Delhi deals with urban air pollution. The priorities are therefore aligned on both ends, making it an excellent platform for collaborative efforts toward mitigating atmospheric pollution and its repercussions from varied sources such as urban areas and wildfires.
OSU was founded at a time when it ranked as the largest computer science school in the United States but only recently ramped up its focus on AI and computer science development. It will house the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, made possible by the gracious $50 million gift by Nvidia’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, and his wife. This research center is expected to be up and running in 2026 with a leading-edge GPU-based supercomputer for developing and funding AI capabilities and climate research. In the future, the complex capability will therefore offer ways to predict crop yields, consider change in marine biodiversity, and enhance ecosystem resilience in oceans, forests, and agriculture.
The collaboration by OSU therefore provides the relevant strategic position for these institutions in the application of cutting-edge research in AI and sustainability to solve critical global challenges and engender innovation at the nexus.
