Two senior Cambridge academics have recently returned from lecture tours in India thanks to a newly-launched Scheme supported by distinguished alumnus Dr Yusuf Hamied (pictured).

The Cambridge-Hamied Visiting Lecture Scheme has been established to stimulate exchange of ideas and academic collaboration between India and the University of Cambridge. It is named after its founder Dr Yusuf Hamied, Chairman of Cipla Ltd, India, and an alumnus of the University’s Department of Chemistry and Christ’s College.

Frank Kelly, Professor of the Mathematics of Systems, has recently returned from India where he visited three cities as the inaugural Cambridge-Hamied Visiting Lecturer.

The Master of Christ's College, Professor Kelly’s main research interests are in random processes, networks and optimisation. He is especially interested in applications to the design and control of networks and to the understanding of self-regulation in large-scale systems.

He first travelled to Chennai at the invitation of one of his former PhD students, Dr Gaurav Raina, based at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

An exciting aspect of Dr Raina’s research is into the use of the mobile phone – with 200 million subscribers in India – for banking, commerce and rural development.

Professor Kelly met with senior researchers at the IIT and delivered two lectures, one to faculty and one to students.

At the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore he met with the faculty from several departments and gave a lecture. In Mumbai he visited the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, again to meet the faculty and give a lecture.

The lectures in Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai explored various mathematical aspects of resource sharing in large-scale systems with particular applications including congestion control on the Internet and road-pricing for transport networks

Mrs Farida Hamied and Dr Yusuf Hamied hosted a buffet supper in Mumbai for Professor and Mrs Kelly to meet a large number of Cambridge alumni, including many from Christ’s College, and members of the Cambridge Society, Bombay. This gave an opportunity for Professor Kelly to give an account of developments in the University and to thank Dr Hamied personally for his support of the Cambridge India Partnership.

Reflecting on the visit he said: “The trip was very successful at several levels. Research collaborations were extended, potential student applications encouraged, new contacts were made, and my wife and I found friendliness and warmth at every turn. There are many, many opportunities for Cambridge in India and vice-versa. I am very grateful to Dr Hamied for his generous support of the Visiting Lecture scheme.”

Professor William Jones, Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, travelled to Bangalore at the beginning of March, under the Cambridge-Hamied Visiting Lecture Scheme. There he met with Professor C N R Rao, the eminent Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, and senior colleagues. He also visited Professor Gautam Desiraju at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, where he lectured on pharmaceutical materials science.

At the University of Hyderabad he met with several key academics and gave a distinguished lecture on the ‘Application of materials chemistry in the development of new pharmaceuticals’.

Finally Professor Jones travelled to Mumbai where he spent time with Dr Hamied and colleagues at Cipla Research and Development Centre and gave a presentation to research staff.

“As a result of my visit Professor Nagia of the University of Hyderabad and I have begun to facilitate the exchange of PhD students and visitors between Hyderabad and Cambridge.” Professor Jones said.

“Professor Rao has asked me to give invited lectures at the Winter School in Bangalore and also to lecture to a group of young scientists. I was also invited to lecture at the International Conference on the Chemistry of the Organic Solid State meeting in June 2011 in Bangalore.

“Dr Hamied has invited me to visit his manufacturing unit in Goa. He and I have many research interests in common. I am very grateful to him for founding this visiting lecturer scheme.”

Dr Hamied matriculated at Christ's in 1954 to read Natural Sciences and is still very appreciative of the support he received in his six years at Cambridge. He is a generous supporter of the College and the University.

He is Chairman and Managing Director of Cipla - a major pharmaceutical company in India which provides affordable drugs for millions of people throughout the world.

Dr Hamied is a member of the Cambridge India Partnership Advisory Board and of the Cambridge Society, Bombay.

The next Cambridge-Hamied Visiting Lecturer is set to be Dr Sharachchandra Lele of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) who is due to visit Cambridge in May to collaborate with Dr Bhaskar Vira of the Political Ecology research group in the Department of Geography.

ATREE is a major inter-disciplinary research centre based in Bangalore which focuses on action-oriented research to generate knowledge in order to protect India’s biodiversity. Dr Lele and Dr Vira have a long-standing collaboration on forest governance issues in India.
 

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