Partnership also entails faculty and researcher mobility, joint research, publications, conferences, and faculty development

July 6, 2022: Plaksha University, one of India’s largest collective philanthropy efforts to build a tech university of global eminence, and University of California San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI), a leading research institution, signed an MoU for joint research and data science programs.

The MoU covers areas like cooperation in the fields of computer science, data science and other mutually beneficial areas of interest, such as:

• Student, scholar, researcher, and faculty mobility
• Special short-term programs, including executive training programs, workshops and visits
• Joint research and development projects and publications
• Publications, materials, and information exchange; and
• Research internships

The MoU was signed by Prof. Rudra Pratap, the Founding Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University and Prof. Pradeep K Khosla, Chancellor of the University of California, San Diego at the Plaksha University campus in Mohali.

Prof. Rudra Pratap, the Founding Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University (former Deputy Director of Indian Institute of Science) said, “It is an honor to work with UCSD. It is a great opportunity for our faculty and students to define their academic careers using the knowledge of both institutions. We anticipate further partnerships with HDSI as our alliance develops going forward.”

Prof. Pradeep K Khosla, Chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, said, “We are pleased to collaborate with a new-age university like Plaksha University. With the help of this collaboration, students from Plaksha University and HDSI will be tremendously inspired to work on engaging research projects and will have the opportunity to interact with faculty members from both institutes. We anticipate working with them on new and interesting projects.”

Earlier this year Prof Rajesh Gupta, who is Professor and Qualcomm Endowed Chair, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UCSD joined Plaksha’s Academic Advisory Board and was the General Co-chair of Plaksha’s Conference on AI. He will lead this partnership from UCSD.

About Plaksha University

Founded by a global community of 100+ technology and business leaders, Plaksha envisions to reimagine technology education and research for India and the world. With strong partnerships with UC Berkeley, Purdue, UC San Diego, IIT Kanpur, and IISc Bangalore, Plaksha aims to nurture and empower a generation of catalytic leaders and create an ecosystem of research and innovation. The university collapses the traditional boundaries of engineering and promotes interdisciplinary learning by combining technology, design and entrepreneurship.

Plaksha is guided by an eminent academic board including Dr. Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania; Venkatesh Narayanamurthi, former Dean of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Sriram Rajamani, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India Julia Ross, Dean of Engineering, Virginia Tech; Krishna Palepu, Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Sanjay Sarma, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT; and business leaders such as Neeraj Aggarwal, Chairman – Asia Pacific, BCG; Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter & CEO, Info Edge (Naukri.com); Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Fractal Analytics; Manas Fuloria, Co- Founder, Nagarro; Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund; Sujeet Kumar, Co-founder, Udaan.com; Dalip Pathak, Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC; CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra; Pramod Bhasin, Chairman, Clix Capital among others. Corporate donors include companies like Bharti Foundation, Havells, HT Parekh Foundation, Mphasis, Axis Bank and Motilal Oswal. The global community of business leaders who founded Plaksha can be seen here.

About Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, UC San Diego

The cross-disciplinary Halicioğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) was established in 2018 by its Founding Director, Dr. Rajesh Gupta, as the UC San Diego campus hub for data science. HDSI builds on the university’s strengths of multidisciplinary collaboration and data science to provide researchers across the campus a powerful engine to incorporate data science into their respective disciplines, allowing them to better understand and make predictions about the world.

Its mission is to lay the groundwork for the scientific foundations of this emerging discipline, develop new methods and infrastructure, and train students, faculty, and industrial partners to use data science in ways that will allow them to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

HDSI has built a core of more than 200 faculty members affiliated across more than 20 academic disciplines, from mathematics to the medical school. HDSI is organized into "clusters" of shared interest and domain knowledge including Data Science Theory, Enabling Discovery, Cross-Cutting Systems, and Data Science in Society.