Setting up of IIT campus in Abu Dhabi gathers pace

The UAE could soon have a campus of India's premier technology institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), with the country's parliament discussing the setting up of a branch of IIT Delhi in Abu Dhabi.

As per reports in WAM, the UAE'S official news agency, a highlevel team from IIT Delhi recently concluded a visit to the UAE capital and held extensive discussions with officials from the Department of Education and Knowledge Abu Dhabi (ADEK) and other stakeholders in the UAE.

India's minister of state for education, Subhas Sarkar, has informed the Lok Sabha — the lower house of the Indian parliament — in writing that plans are going ahead to speedily establish the IIT campus in Abu Dhabi.

“The Department of Education and Knowledge, Abu Dhabi was identified as the relevant UAE authority for this purpose. In the first ADEK-IIT meeting, both sides made presentations about their respective organisations and conveyed their eagerness and enthusiasm to move forward with this project,” Sarkar said.

Outlining the sequence of events and progress of the IIT'S UAE outreach, the Indian minister informed parliament: “In the second ADEK-IIT meeting, ADEK invited representatives from the Department of Economic Development and from the Advanced Technology Research Council who made presentations on the economic vision and the research priorities of Abu Dhabi respectively. On a request from ADEK, IIT Delhi made a presentation on the model followed for mentoring new IITS by the older IITS and shared its experiences in mentoring IIT Ropar and IIT Jammu.”

At its 53rd Convocation three weeks ago, IIT Delhi announced: “IIT Delhi has been in discussions with ADEK on various aspects of the proposed IIT in Abu Dhabi. A working group comprising IIT Delhi faculty members and ADEK experts has had several meetings.”