On January 23 (Monday), President Kamado, Vice President Osamu Takahashi, and Professor Yukio Miyashita from NUT attended the Japan–India Universities Forum held at Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo.
This forum was hosted by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and addressed the theme of “Strengthening exchanges and resolving future problems among universities and research institutions in Japan and India: Training and supporting exchanges of young innovators”. The event aimed to build a foundation for exchanges that would further promote Japan–India cooperation.
Representatives (including university presidents and other staff) from 10 Indian universities and 22 Japanese universities/institutions attended the forum and held discussions aimed at strengthening ties between both countries.
In the first part of the forum, the presidents of the universities delivered speeches to describe their institutions’ achievements and future challenges in Japan–India exchanges. The second part of the forum involved breakout sessions of roundtable discussions in which the participants exchanged opinions on the challenges in training young personnel and inter-university cooperation.
During President Kamado’s speech in the first part, he presented NUT’s accomplishments in academic exchanges with Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) and other Indian universities. He also introduced the “International Cooperative Educational Program using Dual Internship on Multidimensional Campus” (Partner universities: IITM and the University of York), which was selected as an Inter-University Exchange Project in this academic year.
At present, NUT has entered into academic exchange agreements with four universities and one research institution in India, and has engaged in particularly active exchanges with IITM. For example, in the “Cooperative Engineer Education Program with South Indian Universities based on the Long-Term Internship Experience”, which was selected as a Re-Inventing Japan Project in 2014, we built a credit transfer system for the master’s program with IITM. We also established an international collaborative education system with joint supervision in the doctoral program (agreement concluded in March 2020; NUT was the first university in Asia to enter into such an agreement with IITM), and promoted the enhancement of student dispatch programs, such as the overseas Jitsumu-Kunren internship for 4th-year undergraduates. We have even placed a Japanese coordinator in the IITM campus to ensure the smooth implementation of these initiatives.
Within the newly launched Inter-University Exchange Project, students from Japan and English-speaking countries will engage in education and research exchanges regarding advanced technologies by actually traveling to each other’s countries or through online and virtual platforms. Through these activities, we will nurture the development of leading engineers who can perform at the global level, promote exchanges with Indian and UK universities, as well as build and strengthen strategic international networks.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1952, Japan and India have enjoyed a long history of friendship spanning 70 years. On the occasion of this milestone, this forum offered a venue for representatives from major universities in both countries to gather, and provided an opportunity for others to learn about NUT’s position of active academic exchanges with India.

President Kamado delivering his speech

Group photo of the participants