Panjab University (PU) Chandigarh and University of Western Sydney (UWS), Australia jointly organised a research workshop at PU on January 10.

The activity was organized consequent to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between PU and UWS, Australia in August,
2014.
       Two technical sessions on different themes and one general session were held in which presentations on Diversity included the sub-themes of Migrant friendly cities; understanding job-seeking experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse job-seekers in Australia; aboriginal culture and national consciousness; comparative analysis of indigenous writing in North-east India and Aboriginal Writing of Australia; multilingualism, language diversity and language change; language independent keyword extraction systems; Sentiment Analysis; big-data analysis tools and techniques; and e-mail spam filtering using machine learning techniques were given.

In the workshops, visiting UWS delegation led by Dean Prof Kevin Dunn discussed and deliberated with PU counterparts about developing joint research projects on those themes.

Both, PU & UWS agreed that the partnership that began 6 months ago has made good progress. There have been visits of UWS faculty to PU, development of joint research proposals and now the next step would be to exchange notes on curricular material, train staff and students in comparative research skills, develop team taught PhD and Graduate programmes and explore developing dual degree programmes, they agreed.

Presiding over the general session, PU Vice Chancellor (VC) Prof. Arun Kumar Grover complimented the choice of topics for being timely, high potential and relevant. He informed that the Government of India has put aside Rs. 1000 crore for developing man power in cyber security and data comprehension. Both the Universities should set up courses to produce manpower in response to this opportunity, he added. Further, he suggested focus sing on India-specific aspects. 

PU VC talked about PU attracting the best talent from the region, having a huge presence among the international diaspora and having the
onus of meeting the aspirations of society. International collaborations play a critical role in helping an institution benchmark its standards on the global stage. Thus to be counted as a premier global research institution we seek excellent global partnerships, he added.

PU Dean University Instructions Prof AK Bhandari talked about the need for the institution to find ways to organise funds for research and mobility of its faculty to achieve academic excellence for the University.
      Dean International Students, Prof Ramanjit Kaur Johal and UWS Dean Kevin Dunn looked forward to carrying this collaboration to the next level of implementation. Dean Arts Prof Ronki Ram, Dean Alumni Prof Anil Monga, Director University Institute of Engineering & Technology (UIET) Prof Renu Vig also participated in the sessions.