IIT Bombay, through its ‘International Relations’ office, has been actively forging global partnerships with other educational institutions, with an aim to drive and capture the value of the knowledge economy across national borders.
The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), part of the University of Illinois System, is a consortium of global universities to which IIT Bombay has been recently invited. DPI works in the areas of applied R&D, business building, and tech talent development in collaboration with a total of 19 academic and research partners, which include universities from the USA, UK, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, Mexico and India
The sixth DPI Partners annual council meeting was held at Cardiff University on 11 - 12 September 2025, in which IIT Bombay participated actively.
On the first day, IIT Bombay Director, Prof. Shireesh Kedare held center-stage in the Presidential Roundtable titled “Social Media - freedom of expression or a platform for repression?“. He was joined by Wendy Larner (President/Vice-Chancellor, Cardiff University), Timothy L. Killeen (President, University of Illinois System), Ariel Porat (President, Tel Aviv University), Sabine Brock (Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) and William Lee (Vice President for International Affairs, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). The day concluded with a congregation of the council members discussing various forms of collaboration at the historic Cardiff Castle.
On the second day, the newly added “Innovation & Entrepreneurship Council” of the DPI was unveiled. Notably, Prof. Milind Atrey (Deputy Director – Academics, Research & Translation, IIT Bombay) has assumed charge as the introductory chairperson (2025 – 2027) of the I&E council.
Prof. Atrey shared his vision and associated plans to drive synergy through the I&E council for the next two years. During his presentation, he also introduced @Bharat Innovates 2026, a path-breaking MoE initiative which aims to take India’s deep-tech innovations global.
Finally, Prof. Sankalp Pratap (DSSE, IIT Bombay) moderated a panel discussion titled, “Translation: multi-dimensionality of challenge across activity and technology domains” which included Prof Lucia Vazquez (Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, University of Illinois Springfield), Prof Jeff Terry (Vice Provost for Research, Illinois Institute of Technology), Mr Hagai Itkin (Director of Industry Relationships, Tel Aviv University) and Prof Roger Whitaker (Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Enterprise, Cardiff University)
With innovation and entrepreneurship gaining primacy in the Indian economy, IIT Bombay will continue to forge international partnerships to decode and propagate the science behind translation and venture creation to unlock the technological might of India’s higher education institutes.