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3rd Indo-French Knowledge Summit to boost educational ties at Pune varsity in March 2021
SPPU vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar and Sonia Barbry, Consul General of France, in Mumbai, announced on Tuesday, that the Knowledge Summit will be in its third edition
A summit to further Indo-French cooperation in the corporate sector; develop and structure collaborations in education and research; stimulate connections between research and industry and encourage the mobility of students and scholars between the countries, has been planned at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).
SPPU will host an Indo-French Knowledge Summit in March 2021 to further cultural interactions and create more partnerships in the future between the two countries.
SPPU vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar and Sonia Barbry, Consul General of France, in Mumbai, announced on Tuesday, that the Knowledge Summit will be in its third edition. The first summit, launched by French President Emmanuel Macron, was held in 2018 in Delhi.
Last year, the second edition of the Indo-French Knowledge Summit was dedicated to higher education, research and innovation and took place at the Université de Lyon in France.
Karmalkar was one of the participants of the summit last year. At least 300 participants from the Indian and French academia, research organisations, corporate houses, competitive clusters and startups were present for last year’s summit. Karmalkar said, “The summit has a series of interactive sessions, allowing participants to deepen scientific and academic cooperation between the two countries and launch concrete initiatives in aviation, aerospace, smart cities, electric mobility, urban planning and architecture, agriculture and food processing, renewable energy, artificial intelligence and mathematics, valorisation of natural resources from plants, marine sciences and enhancement of employability and entrepreneurship.”
The vice-chancellor is also keen on the memorandum of understanding (MOUs) which will be signed during the summit in 2021. In 2019, there were around 15 agreements between French and Indian participants during the summit.
According to Barbry, the continued partnership between India and France has resulted in a sharp increase in Indian students choosing France for higher studies over the past two years, with the current intake of Indian students at 10,000 and she expects that after the third edition, the number of students studying in France will increase to 20,000 by 2025. There are already more than 500 partnerships between business schools and engineering colleges in India and France.
