The Association of American Universities (AAU) has appointed members and co-chairs to a new task force to study expanding research and higher education partnerships between the United States and India. The co-chairs of the AAU Task Force on expanding United States-India University partnerships include The Pennsylvania State University President Neeli Bendapudi, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Robert J. Jones, University of California San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla, University at Buffalo President Satish K. Tripathi, and current Johns Hopkins University Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Sunil Kumar (who is set to become president of Tufts University on July 1).
AAU has created this task force in coordination with the Biden administration’s U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), which seeks to grow technological and industrial collaboration between the two nations. The task force will meet monthly to determine key focus areas for bilateral research and education cooperation, to identify existing programs that could provide blueprints for future partnerships, and to formulate strategies on how best to move forward.
“It is nearly impossible in today’s world to make advancements in scientific research and technology without international collaboration and cooperation,” said AAU President Barbara R. Snyder. “This is why the Association of American Universities is proud to lead this effort to strengthen relationships between leading U.S. and Indian research universities and to lay the groundwork for shared future scientific and economic success.”
In addition to the co-chairs, Yannis C. Yortsos, Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California is selected as one of the taskforce members.
“The extraordinary advances in science and technology and their accelerating rate in recent years have become possible because of the participation of global talent from many disciplines,” said Yortsos. “Such international synergy is increasingly critical as we face important new global challenges, from sustainability to health to security and to enriching the lives of all peoples of our planet. The new AAU initiative between the US and India in support of the scientific and technology enterprise will enable new discoveries, cultivate new ecosystems in thought leadership and innovation with a human-centric focus, and solve existing and emerging global problems for the benefit of humanity. At USC, we treasure our long-standing relationship with Indian educational institutions and the strong and enduring engagement with Indian students and stakeholders. We look forward to continuing to advance and enlarge these partnerships.”
The task force members include:
- Heidi Arola, Director of Global Partnerships and Director of the Purdue-India partnership, Purdue University
- Venkataramanan “Ragu” Balakrishnan, Dean of Engineering, Case Western Reserve University
- Ravi V. Bellamkonda, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Emory University
- Roger Brindley, Vice Provost for Global Programs, The Pennsylvania State University
- Venu Govindaraju, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, University at Buffalo
- Amita Gupta, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins University
- Rajesh K. Gupta, Professor and Qualcomm endowed chair, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego.
- Katie Hrinyak, Associate Vice President for global initiatives and strategy, The University of Chicago
- Pradeep Khanna, Executive Associate Vice Chancellor for corporate relations and economic development, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Pramod Khargonekar, Vice Chancellor for research, University of California, Irvine
- Richard Lester, Associate Provost for International Activities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stephen D. Mull, Vice Provost for Global Affairs, University of Virginia
- Padma Raghavan, Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Vanderbilt University
- Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Vice President for Research, Rice University
- Yannis C. Yortsos, Dean of Engineering, University of Southern California
