Who are we
We identify, promote, catalyze, add value to, assist in the scale up and multiplication of promising practices for collaboration in Research & Development Curriculum & Technology Enhanced Delivery Innovation& Entrepreneurship Quality and Accreditation Processes Industry Participation

The information technology revolution and the liberalization of economies around the world have led to globalization of the human resource pool for technology. US and India are at the leading edge of this change. Research, development, innovation and entrepreneurship are increasingly carried out via cross-border initiatives involving both the academic and business communities. The need to innovate new technologies in collaboration with the users of the technologies has changed the workforce needs of the business world, while the aptitudes andtalents of the future workforce have changed radically as a consequence of easy access to digital and communications technologies.  Although engineering educational institutions in US and India are responding to these changes, many of them are inhibited by traditional approaches to teaching and research.

Engineering education needs to pay more attention to the development of innovation, entrepreneurship and the ability of its graduates to function in a constantly changing global environment. The future of the US technical workforce is further challenged by the lack of interest and preparation among its youth for science and engineering careers.  At the same time, India has a large number of youth with strong math and science skills interested in engineering careers, but limited by inadequately trained faculty, poor facilities and limited research in a majority of its engineering colleges.

Engineering educators of US and India are in a unique position to address these challenges by working together. Strong bonds have already been developed between US and India, because of the large number of Indian engineering graduates who migrate to the US and make valuable contributions to the US research enterprise and to the US economy. Several of these engineers have become entrepreneurs and have played a major role in the Information Technology revolution and in a variety of non-technology oriented industries such as hospitality. Many of them are also leaders in engineering education in the US. This synergy between US and India provides the opportunity for the two countries to collaborate on building the next generation technical workforce using new paradigms.

Pan IIT, an organization of the alumni and faculty of Indian Institutes of Technology, has provided a strong foundation for building this Collaboration. At the recent Pan IIT 2006 Conference held in Mumbai, one of the key action items called for IITs and IITians to contribute to nation building by assisting in the improvement of the quality of engineering education throughout India.