Call for Bids Update
Major and standard awards
The evaluation process for this year’s standard and major awards is now almost complete. Eighteen shortlisted major award proposals and 261 standard award proposals have been evaluated by over 800 peer reviewers and then reviewed by expert panels. We are now finalising this process and have started talking to some of the institutions involved. Winners will be announced in a formal ceremony in the second half of January. Click on the photograph for viewing larger image.

Project Formulation Travel Grants
Thirty six of these awards have been made to date. These are primarily designed to enable potential collaborators to formulate research proposals and collaborative delivery programmes.

Scholarships and Research Fellowships
The UKIERI PhD programme was advertised in mid September 2006 and remained open for applications till 15 October 2006.  We received overwhelming response with 750+ applications from all over India.  Applications were scrutinised and interviews held in early November.  Nine excellent candidates have been selected for the awards covering subjects like Epigenetics, Electrochemical Engineering, Anthropology and Development, Microbial Colonisation, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Legal and Political Philosophy, Infrastructure Analysis – Telecom Network, Spoken Dialog Interfaces to Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), Response to pipelines in liquefiable soils. The selected candidates will start their doctoral programme in January 2007.

Schools
The eleven clusters of UK and Indian schools that came together at the Contact Seminar in September have been busy working on their joint Project Plan Template. These templates were reviewed by a panel. Based on the panel recommendations all the clusters have submitted the revised Project Plan Templates. The process of release of funds is in progress and schools have begun the planned activities with great enthusiasm.

Professional and Technical Skills (PTS)
PTS Partnership Development workshop was organised in New Delhi from 21-24 Nov ’06. This workshop was designed to enable the three approved partnerships from India and UK to develop detailed project plans and begin implementation of their projects. The workshop gave an opportunity to the partners to visit the Indian institutions and to share with each other - their best practices, concerns, finances, risks and over all expected outcomes of the project. It was very interactive and fruitful workshop highly appreciated by the participants.
Click on the photograph for viewing larger image.

Corporate Partnerships
UKIERI’s Corporate Champions continue to provide their wholehearted support to the initiative. Pia MacRae , Director , Communications and External Affairs , BP India , represented the Corporate Champions on the UKIERI Board, which met in the first week of December to consider and approve the recommendations of the evaluation panel for the HE Awards .

Four out of the eleven school clusters were selected for a 3 yr sponsorship by the Corporate Champions . BAE is associated with the Yorkshire-Bangalore cluster ; BP with the Leicester-Delhi I cluster ; GSK with the Harrow-Kolkata cluster ; and Shell with the Bristol-Delhi II cluster .

The first batch of 10 Chemistry Trainees, recruited from leading Indian Universities are in UK to begin their work placements at GSK.

KPMG , our Keystone Partner of financial Services Skills Exchange , has kindly agreed to pro-bono support for research into global skills needs of employers in financial and business services , particularly in UK & India , as a part of their in kind contribution towards the Initiative.

Staff Changes

Tarang Gupta has joined us as the Project Manager - E-Learning.
E-mail: tarang.gupta@in.britishcouncil.org.

Malyaj Varmani has joined us as Project Manager - UKIERI.
E-mail: Malyaj.varmani@in.britishcouncil.org.

Pia Weston has joined as the Executive Assistant at Spring Gardens.
E-mail: pia.weston@britishcouncil.org.

Suzanne Gardiner has joined as the Senior Programme Officer at Manchester.
E-mail: Suzanne.gardiner@britishcouncil.org.