IIT Bombay and Thales Sign a Pact for PhD Fellowship Programme

An agreement has been signed between the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and French electronic systems company Thales to offer a PhD fellowship programme from July this year.

According to a press release issued, through the ‘IIT Bombay-CNRS PhD fellowship scheme’, there would be a collaboration between Thales and IITB on the use of laboratories and R&D (Research & Development) for industrial applications.

“Promoting R&D as a way of fostering economic development is of mutual interest to both Thales and IIT Bombay, making this a preferred collaboration. Given our long standing commitment to the Indian Market, this is a natural step forward towards strengthening the knowledge and innovation ecosystem in the country and being even closer to our clients,” said Patrice Cain, CEO and chairman Thales.

There would be a PhD supervisor in India and a co-supervisor in France (from one of the selected CNRS laboratories) for the students who would be selected for the jointly supervised fellowships. The programme would offer an opportunity to the highly qualified students of IIT Bombay to conduct a part of their research project in both countries in areas such as advanced electronics, electromagnetics or complex system engineering.

In the words of Devang V Khakhar, director, IIT Bombay,” We are delighted to collaborate with the global innovation leader, Thales, for this fellowship scheme. It would provide our top students with an access to cutting-edge French technologies and advanced industrial environments to carry out research, and would set the ground for long-standing Indo-French partnerships.”

Director, CNRS in India, Srinivas Kaveri stated,” This unique programme would not only foster research collaboration between India and France, but also drive industry-led innovation while enabling students to gain immense knowledge and exposure at the same time.”