On February 5th 2009, Dr. Praveen Vishakantaiah, President, Intel® India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dr. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur. As per the Memorandum, Intel will extend the existing partnership with IIT-Kanpur through a Research School Program therefore focusing on long-term strategic collaboration with the institute.

Dr. Praveen Vishakantaiah, President Intel India and Dr. Sanjay Dande, Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur exchanging the MOU

On the occasion, Dr. Vishakantaiah shared that the world’s first six core micro-processor has been completely architectured and designed in India and the same machine will be donated to IIT, Kanpur for the purpose of research. This initiative will help encourage academic and industry collaboration for continued development of higher education ecosystem.

Director, IIT, Kanpur, Dr. Dhande spoke about the contribution of Professor Sanjeev Agarwal of the Computer Science Department – an alumnus of the institute and Mr. Manav Subodh, from Intel towards the signing of the MoU. He described the occasion of signing of the MoU as a golden moment in the history of IIT, Kanpur. He shared that this initiative focuses on developing long-term sustainable relationship with Intel through in-depth engagements around student and faculty programs, research programs, curriculum development and technology entrepreneurship programs. He added that this initiative of Intel will strengthen the research ecosystem in the country and IIT Kanpur will look further to improve and influence the curriculum to make it more effective.

Professor Sanjeev Agarwal commended the Ph.D. sponsorship program for student development, where Intel will hire a post-graduate student as an employee or an interim. He highlighted how this program will encourage students to pursue Ph.D. without having to worry about education costs and will also improve the quality of student research and Ph.D. enrolment in India.