April 27, 2012
Photo credit: Luther Caverly

Canada-India Centre

Carleton’s cutting-edge research concerning India, and technologies and business and entrepreneurship practices relevant to the Asian country, are opening up new doors to international agreements.

The Canada-India Centre for Excellence in Science, Technology, Trade and Policy, after two years of operation, has led to events such as signing memorandums of understanding in Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, and hosting Canada-India Summits on Innovation and on Education and high-profile delegations from India.

As the stature of the Centre grows, it is shining a light on a generation of research at Carleton in fields as diverse as history, technology, entrepreneurship and social policy, says its director, Lina Kalfayan. “Canada-India relations continue to deepen and strengthen across sectors. India being nowadays an emerging superpower and a key global market, it’s very important to nurture these ties,” Kalfayan says. “The time is right to further enhance Carleton’s longstanding relationship with India.”

This is coming not only in the form of research, but also student and faculty exchanges between Indian universities and Carleton, and mobilizing knowledge between public, private, academic and government entities, she noted.

The time is right to further enhance Carleton’s longstanding relationship with India.

We’re across departments … That’s what makes the Centre so unique.

“We’re active across departments. Philosophy, humanities, policy, public health, business, economics, computer science, geomatics and cartographic research, engineering and others. That’s what makes the Centre so unique. It is not dedicated to one discipline. It is interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary.”

Even individual professors are seeking cross-disciplinary applications of their work. Shikharesh Majumdar, the director of Carleton’s Real Time and Distributed Systems Research Centre, is working on technology that underpins cloud computing.

The cloud that provides computing and on-demand storage resources is a popular and cost-effective way for companies to process and manage their information these days, he said. Carleton has a particular focus on this work through its Huawei-TELUS Innovation Centre for Enterprise Cloud Services, which opened in January 2012.

“For a small startup company in particular, it’s a great opportunity because you don’t have to start up a lab. You can rent resources, test software and move on,” says Majumdar. “This is also valuable in rural areas of India, where they may not have many resources available.”

It has been an explosive growth in the invention and exploitation of modern electronic products/gadgets during the last couple of years

His work can also be applied to resource management for sensor-based bridge management for monitoring and maintaining the health of bridges scattered across a region.

Carleton’s Ram Achar, who is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, is also engaging India in his field of research – Multi-physics and Mixed-domain Computer-aided Design Tools and Methodologies.

“Current users of electronic products are increasingly demanding multi-function products with faster operational speeds,” he says, which is very true in India where usage of mobile and smart phones is becoming highly prevalent.

“It has been an explosive growth in the invention and exploitation of modern electronic products/gadgets during the last couple of years”, says Achar who continues to develop faster and more accurate computer-aided design tools.

For his part, Anil Maheshwari, a professor in Carleton’s School of Computer Science, has been collaborating for the past eight years with professors at institutions in India at Vivekananda University, Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Indian Statistical Institute, Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Science and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
His 20-member research group includes four doctoral students from India attending Carleton on Commonwealth scholarships.

“Carleton has one of the strongest research groups in algorithms, and in particular in computational geometry, in Canada. Our group regularly attracts top-quality students and numerous visitors,” he says. “These Commonwealth students choosing Carleton, and our research group in particular, is proof of this.”

With work ongoing such as this, Kalfayan says Carleton is well-positioned to extend its reputation as a leading Canadian research centre for India.

“The next step is to really become the focal point for research and collaborative activity bi-nationally. Our approach is inclusive, and we have the momentum and relationships to build strong bi-national partnerships between Canadian and Indian institutions, businesses, and communities.”

Read more about the various disciplines involved in the Canada-India Centre.

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