The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has partnered with the government of India?s department of biotechnology to form the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) in India.
The institute will be modeled after the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology (HST) and will include faculty from multiple disciplines and professions and offer degrees through multi-disciplinary programmes. The institute is funded by the Indian government and will be a research-and – training centre that will be highly interconnected with other regional centres of excellence.
Susan Hockfield, president, Massachussetts Institute of Technology said, ?MIT has always opened the doors between disciplines and with THSTI, we want to build multi-disciplinary programmes. We are also partnering with IIT-Madras.?
To foster a culture of innovation in THSTI, HST will help recruit and train new faculty members. Each year, starting September 2008 and continuing until 2011, four recruited faculty fellows from THSTI will join the HST faculty. These faculty fellows will train at HST for two years and will develop translational research programmes, and design courses and curricula for THSTI. ?We are not sure at this stage if students from THSTI will be going to HST, but the faculty will be,? said Hockfield.
MIT has also initiated an ?International Innovation Initiative? (I-Cube) modeled on the Deshpande Centre for Technological Innovation, that will work with international partners to identify and select collaborative research projects across multiple disciplines that could lead to new company formation, connect researchers to local and global venture capital networks, and develop courses for students that address technological innovation and go to market strategies.