All things India at U-M

A visit to the Bombay house, the Tata headquarters by U-M President Mark Schlissel put in focus, one of the oldest collaborations for University of Michigan.

It first began when CK Prahalad, a Ross School of Business professor approached the Tata group."He challenged us to think about frugal innovations," said Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Group. "His bottom of the pyramid concept has been a huge inspiration for us.”

That led to conceptualizing an executive education program for Tata executives at the Ross School of Business which had been going strong for 25 years.

At Bombay House, Schlissel participated in TATA talks, a Ted Talks style conversation over a wide range of topics with Tata chief economist Rupa Purushothaman. “I am in India here to see what India is prioritizing in education in both near term and long term future," Schlissel said. "The fact that we are both democracies and there is a big english speaking population makes it an ideal partner for us."

U-M President Mark Schlissel participated in the lamp lighting ceremony at Salokaya School of Nursing.

The lamp lighting ceremony at Salokaya is a solemn occasion for the students entering the nursing profession as they take the Nurses pledge on this day along with lighting a candle in remembrance of Florence Nightingale.

The lamp is an international nurse symbol that is widely known to symbolize Florence Nightingale and her transforming work in the nursing profession.

University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel started his week-long trip of India by visiting two partner institutions in the capital city of Delhi.

The first stop was All India Institute of Medical Sciences, often considered one of the best medical colleges in India. U-M’s partnership with AIIMS started in 2010 when Raghvendran Krishnan, a professor of surgery in the U-M School of Medicine started a collaboration with AIIMS trauma care.

Over the last decade, the partnership has grown to include research and collaboration on cancer, immunology, genetics and disaster medicine.

“Research institutions have critical roles in setting the agenda for global science,” said Schlissel while addressing a group of scientists from both institutions. “The goals of surgical education, patient care, and research can be seamlessly integrated in a model of “convergence science,” 

ANN ARBOR—About 30 senior Indian educators are spending a week at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business as part of a new Leadership for Academicians program.

The LEAP program, launched by the India Ministry of Human Resource Development, provides a three-week training program for upcoming academic leaders. The collaboration between U-M's Ross Business School and the Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee is the first one in a series.

The educators, who come from 15 states across India, spent the first two weeks in India as part of the new executive education program. They are attending the final week at U-M's Ann Arbor campus to cover areas critical for the development of academic leadership in India.

"Hearing how an higher education institution works in the U.S. has been eye-opening," said Bhupendra Gandhi, a professor at IIT-Roorkee. "We are looking forward to adapting them in the Indian context."

चिन्नैयन को फन्डिंग नए कैंसर मार्करों को मूल्यांकन करने में मदद करेगे है जो उपचार लक्ष्य बन सकते हैं

एन आर्बर – भारतीय मूल के वैज्ञानिक चिन्नैयन को कैंसर बायोमार्कर्स की पहचान के लिए 65 लाख अमेरिकी डॉलर का पुरस्कार दिया गया है। कैंसर बायोमार्कर की पहचान से कैंसर के उपचार और इस घातक बीमारी के लिए नई लक्षित थेरेपी के विकास में मदद मिलेगी।

मिशिगन यूनिवर्सिटी के शोधकर्त्ता चिन्नैयन को नेशनल कैंसर इंस्टीट्यूट से ‘आउटस्टैंडिंग इन्वेस्टीगेटर अवार्ड’ प्रदान किया है।

यह अनुदान नए जैव सूचना विज्ञान संसाधनों को बनाने, नए कैंसर बायोमाकर्स की पहचान करने, और निदान में सुधार लाने और अंततः नए लक्षित उपचार विकसित करने के शोध में मदद करेगा।

“इस अनुदान से हमें नए बायोमार्कर की पहचान और कैंसर की वृद्धि में उनकी जैविक भूमिका में समझने में मदद मिलेगी,” यूनिवर्सिटी ऑफ मिशिगन मेडिकल स्कूल में पैथोलॉजी के प्रोफेसर चिन्नैयन ने कहा।

ANN ARBOR— A Hindi tweet from Indian politician Lalu Prasad Yadav in December 2017 didn’t have a political message. He simply asked his followers to retweet his message. The tweet went viral and was shared thousands of times.

Now a University of Michigan study finds that Hindi language tweets are more likely to be shared and favorited in India when compared to English.

According to the researchers, the social media landscape has evolved from 2014 when a majority of the tweets on Twitter were from the English-speaking urban population.

“While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party still leads significantly in terms of social media following because of a top-down push from the center, other parties are also recognizing the role of the social media in political outreach,” said Joyojeet Pal, assistant professor at U-M’s School of Information and lead author of the study.

According to the research, a key indicator of this shift is that 11 of the 15 most retweeted messages by Indian politicians in the last year have been in Hindi.

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, April 14, 2018

EVENT: "Politicians and Social Media in the Global South"

This one-day seminar, which is free to the public, explores contemporary scholarship on how politicians use social media to court constituents in developing nations of the Global South.

In countries around the world, a vast majority of major national politicians build social media presences for a diverse mix of reasons. The seminar brings together academicians, social media and political party representatives to look into what these developments mean for the future of political campaigning.

The seminar also looks into how online strategy is impacted by ideology, national economic priorities and political structure, among other topics.

PLACE: Space 2435, North Quad, 105 S. State St., Ann Arbor

SPONSORS: U-M International Institute Enterprise Fund, School of Information, Department of Communication Studies, Center for South Asian Studies, African Studies Center, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies

ANN ARBOR—Training workers with soft skills like time and stress management, problem solving, communication and teamwork can have big impacts on the productivity of workers and company profits, says a University of Michigan researcher.

Achyuta Adhvaryu, assistant professor of business economics and public policy at Michigan's Ross School of Business, has studied the impact of soft skills in the garment industry in India over the past five years, and has now launched a foundation to take the message to other sectors in India.

Along with Anant Nyshadham of Boston College, Adhvaryu started the Good Business Lab last year. Anant Ahuja from Shahi Exports, India's largest garment manufacturing factory, is also a co-founder and CEO of the Lab.

"Our goal with starting a foundation is to study interventions that have the potential to impact worker welfare while also promoting the growth of firms," Adhvaryu said. "We incubate new ideas and serve as a platform to disseminate findings from our research."

The textiles and apparel sector employs more than 119 million workers in India, with women making up roughly 35 percent of the workforce. The garment sector is also the largest employer of low-skilled and semi-skilled female workers.

The University of Michigan celebrated 200th anniversary with its Indian alumni.

James Holloway, Vice Provost for Global Engagement and Interdisciplinary Academic Affairs, said that the university wants to celebrate its bicentennial with alumni around the world.

“U-M is an institution of people and the alumni are its legacy. The 6,000 strong Indian alumni have engaged and contributed to both India and U.S. and we want to recognize those contributions,” he said.

The Indian alumni are over 6,000 strong and include names such as GV Sanjay Reddy, Vice Chairman, GVK.

U-M Indian Alumni Association President Sujoy Bhattacharya, a graduate of the Ross School of Business, said that the passion keeps the alumni involved and enthused. “Having key U-M leaders visit India to celebrate 200 with Indian alumni association has recharged us all,” he said.

Along with James Holloway, deans of three colleges -- Andrew Martin, dean of College of Literature, Science and the Arts; Alec Gallimore, dean of College of Engineering; and Scott De Rue, dean of Stephen M Ross School of Business -- were also in Mumbai to join the celebrations.

Another member of the delegation, Farina Mir, director of U-M Centre for South Asian Studies, said U-M has deep commitments to India.

MUMBAI— With conversations about innovation, entrepreneurship, and impact of an automated world on society, the University of Michigan celebrated 200 years with its Indian alumni at a special event in Mumbai, India.

The two panels organized by University of Michigan and its Indian alumni association included Alec Gallimore dean of College of Engineering, Scott De Rue dean of Ross School of Business, Andrew Martin dean of College of Literature, Science and the Arts along with some key alumni like Chetan Maini, founder of Mahindra Reva Electric vehicles, Ananth Narayan CEO of Myntra, Jabong and Eddie Chandok, President of Infogain among others.

James Holloway, Vice Provost for Global Engagement and Interdisciplinary Academic Affairs, started the evening with a short update about the university to its alums. “In this bicentennial year, U-M is moving in many new directions. There is a new school School of Environment and Sustainability, focus on poverty solutions and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. It is all rooted in our ethos as a public university.”

In first panel, the discussions ranged from partnerships between university and industry to how innovation would change over the next decade.

"The federal funds provide universities the foundation for education and research,” said Gallimore. 

The second panel took the conversation further to delve into the relationship between technology and society and how the institutions can prepare the next generation of students.

How would the human capital change in an automated world, was just one of the questions.