IFMR to sign MoU with MIT

Chennai, Jun 25 (UNI) The city-based Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) Trust, a business school for young managers, will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish an MIT-India IFMR Trust.

Talking to mediapersons here today, IFMR President Rajivan Krishnaswamy said under the agreement, an Innovation India Research Seed Fund would be created to support research by academics focusing on technological innovations in India.

The fund would promote innovations towards development in India by establishing cooperative projects and encouraging multi-disciplinary approaches to technological innovation, he said, adding, a review committee would be formed in consultation with the MIT-India and IFMR.

Mr Krishnasamy also announced the winners of the International Research Competition for the best paper on innovative solutions to India's urban development challenges.

''In my backyard,'' an alternate model for solid waste management in Kerala, a multi-level localised strategy developed by Ms Angelique Chettiparamb of the UK-based Cardiff University, won the first prize, he said.

The competition was conduted by the MIT and the IFMR to highlight cases of innovation and success in response to rapid urbanisation.

More than 100 papers were received from all over the world for the competition and the jurors had spent considerable time on selecting the winners, he said.

The competition had promoted discussion and collaboration among academics, practitioners and politicians to document solutions to urbanisation problems in India.

The second prize went to the case of low income housing in Karnataka, which highlighted the successful project launched by the Karnataka government.

The third prize was shared by two papers - user innovation and e-governance design - providing an analytical case study on the ways in which city administrations and citizens used e-governance to track down public grievances and the turnaround success story of urban public transport undertaking in Bangalore, he added.

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