Visit of INTPART DTRF Project Manager to IIT Indore
The INTPART DTRF project partnership with academic institutions in Norway, India, USA, China, and Japan builds sustainable relationships and collaboration by exploiting the experience, resources, research infrastructure, and complementary expertise of nine partners.
(L to R) Rupendra Pratap Singh Hada, Rajendra Akerkar, Abhishek Srivastava and Ankit Kumar Jain.
The DTRF project manager Professor Rajendra Akerkar recently visited one of the partners, Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IIT Indore) to discuss the bilateral research activities. The DTRF project addresses the need by building and strengthening research and education within disruptive technologies for critical infrastructure resilience. Professor Akerkar had meetings with DTRF colleague Dr. Abhishek Srivastava, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering — in addition to colleagues and students in the institute. Under the DTRF partnership framework, Dr. Srivastava and his doctoral student, Ankit Kumar Jain, are collaborating with Prof. Akerkar and his Big Data & Emerging Technology Research Group at Western Norway Research Institute (Vestlandsforsking) on an efficient, privacy preserving, and cost-effective framework for human activity recognition. The work in progress has potential for use in a variety of applications such as elderly care, public safety, healthcare, human computer interaction, and robotics among others.
During this visit, Professor Akerkar and Dr. Srivastava discussed the significance and consequences of establishing a sustainable long term strategic research and education partnership between their respective research groups. Dr. Somnath Dey, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, was also present on the occasion. They further explored bilateral research and education activities and avenues to broaden research cooperation on leveraging big data and artificial intelligence technologies for critical infrastructure resilience, and cyber-physical systems.
Professor Akerkar took time to interact with doctoral students to share his expertise and experience with the next generation of scholars. Dr. Srivastava also arranged a tour for Professor Akerkar, met with colleagues and staff, and explored IIT campus. IIT Indore has recently set up a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) named as DRiving Innovation through Simulation Hub for Technologies in Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (DRISHTI CPS) which plans to lead in skill enhancement technology development and product commercialization.
The visit resulted in a very productive collaboration between IIT Indore and Western Norway Research Institute. “Being there provided me with an understanding of what goes on in the pertinent research areas at IIT, as well as an overview of who does what in Dr. Srivastava’s research group. I am convinced that this collaboration will provide students and academic staff on both sides a wide range of new opportunities for accomplishing innovative research. It is a step on the way to expanding our international networks and to achieve the overall aim of establishing new, large research projects in coming years”, Professor Akerkar says.
The formal title of the collaboration project is Transnational Partnership for Excellent Research and Education in Disruptive Technologies for a Resilient Future. The DTRF project runs from October 2020. This project has received funding from the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (Diku) through INTPART programme.