5 Professors from IIT/IIM invited to visit Japan

Five professors from IIT-KGP and IIM-A engaged in high speed railway projects in India were invited to visit Japan between June 3 - 8, 2013 by JETRO. The objective of the visit was to introduce the professors to the academia-government-industry alliance that manages Japan’s acclaimed Shinkansen (bullet train) network. The visit was coordinated by JETRO, JICA and The University of Tokyo, with cooperation from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the East Japan Railway Company.

Academic collaboration

On Thursday, June 6 the professors visited The University of Tokyo, where they were welcomed by Prof. Hiroyuki Yamato, Executive Vice President and professor in the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. The School of Engineering’s Dean Harata chaired an interactive session where potential areas of collaboration were discussed.

Then the professors visited the Shibaura Institute of Technology where they met the president of the institute Prof. Murakami and railway expert, Dr. Muralidhar Miryala. At the Shibaura Institute of Technology the professors also visited a superconductivity motor car lab.

Conclusion

The five professors were deeply impressed by Japan’s Shinkansen technology and very high quality of management practices for the combined operation of high speed and non-high speed traffic, as well as the traffic and non-traffic business operations. On returning to India, they all expressed their gratitude to the organizers for a fruitful and well planned visit to Japan.

We hope that this visit will provide an impetus to the expansion of India-Japan collaboration in the railway sector.

List of 5 Professors from IIT and IIM

Indian Member	Department	Title	Name
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Department of Electrical Engineering	Professor	Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad	Public Systems Group	Professor	Ganesan Raghuraman
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Department of Mechanical Engineering	Professor	Subhransu Roy
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Department of Electrical Engineering	Professor	Sabyasachi Sengupta
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Department of Civil Engineering	Professor	Nirjhar Dhang

Dean Harata (School of Engineering) with the professors andother participants at the interactive session held at The University of Tokyo on June 6, 2013.