MAI Develops Cooperation with Universities of India

In February, a delegation from Moscow Aviation Institute, led by the Deputy Head of International Department Alexey Zarechenskiy, paid a business visit to the Indian city of Chennai. Historically, most students of MAI came from this particular region of India. The development of cooperation with educational organizations of Chennai is an important task for our university.

During the trip, various meetings with potential partners were held: Indian Institute of Technology Madras, SRM University and Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College. The negotiations were very productive and a number of agreements were reached on further cooperation in various areas: opportunities of joint work for industrial companies, additional vocational education at MAI for Indian citizens, launch of Dual degree programs, student exchanges and summer schools.

“Even when I was a school student in India, I understood that the Russian aerospace industry is very popular in our country,” - said Praveen Sankaran, regional manager for Asia countries of the International Department of MAI. – “And now, when I visited India as the representative of Russia, I was completely convinced of this. We were very warmly met by both university representatives and their students (most of them were added to my LinkedIn even before we left India). This confirms that MAI and the aerospace industry of Russia are in demand in India, and I am very happy to see so many prospects for cooperation.” 

Praveen himself came to Moscow several years ago from Chennai, last year graduated from the MAI Master's. Now he is engaged in research activities in MAI as well as cooperation development with Indian partners.

Representatives of MAI International Department held an event for children from the Indian organization “Space Kidz India”. It is headed by Dr. Srimathy Kesan, who inspires children, charges them with ideas of space technology and introduces the capabilities of MAI in this area. Every year Indian schoolchildren from “Space Kidz” enter our university. The event took place at the venue and with the support of MAI partner, the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Chennai.

Meetings were also held with existing partner universities from Chennai - Hindustan University and Veltech University. Students of these universities have already come to MAI for one semester on the academic exchange program. This experience turned out to be very positive for students - after graduation from undergraduate programs at their university, some of them entered MAI Master’s degree programs.

“The development of cooperation with Indian universities is one of the priorities of MAI international activity,” -  stresses Alexey Zarechenskiy. - “We see significant interest from Indian colleagues and expect that our work will bring tangible results in the near future.”