New university will increase India’s capacity to translate scientific and medical achievements into healthcare improvements.
MIT and India’s Department of Biotechnology launched a collaboration agreement to create a Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) based in India, modeled on the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). This academy will be a disciplinary, multiprofessional research and training center that will be highly connected with other regional centers of excellence.
The new scientific/medical academy, funded by the Indian government, will include faculty from multiple disciplines and professions. HST will help in recruiting and training faculty members and will send four THSTI faculty fellows each year, until 2011, to train with the HST faculty in order to learn how to design courses and curricula as well as develop translational research programs for THSTI.
This is the second partnership between MIT and India; 50 years ago the two collaborated on the creation of the India Institute of Technology in Kanpur, one of India’s top-ranked engineering and science schools.
“Tremendous potential exists in India, with its excellence in engineering and science. This partnership is an opportunity to create a long-term, synergistic relationship that will result in wide-ranging benefits to global health,” says M. K. Bhan, secretary in the department of biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology.