Five undergraduate students from India are spending part of their summer conducting research at McMaster as part of the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) Globalink internship program.

The program will expose the students, who are from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, to universities across Canada.

“There is a wealth of knowledge and creativity in India that both McMaster and Canada could really benefit from,” said Allison Sekuler, dean of Graduate Studies. “We are very interested in increasing the diversity of our graduate programs.”

In addition to being potential McMaster graduate students, the interns will also serve as ambassadors for the University upon their return to India.

“All of our current interns found out about the program through their friends who did it last year,” said Sekuler. “It's a great opportunity for McMaster to make a mark abroad.”

MITACS is a national organization that seeks to strengthen the link between academia, private industry and government to bolster Canada's knowledge economy.

“India's young students demonstrate a strong potential in scientific and technical research,” said Rebecca Bourque, director of business development for MITACS. “But unfortunately there isn't enough of a focus on Canadian graduate programs in India. So the Globalink program tries to introduce these students to applied research jobs and industrial engagements with various companies to show them the benefits of studying and working in Canada.”

Arnab Sengupta, who will spend his time at McMaster working on image and video resolution upconversion with Xiaolin Wu of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says he's thrilled to be at McMaster.

“The cultural experience of discovering Hamilton and McMaster is very nice,” said Sengupta. “It's great exposure to a more research-oriented approach than we have in India.”

“It's great to know that we have so many options for our graduate studies,” said Arun Dobriyal, who is studying approximation algorithms for flow problems with George Karakostas from the Department of Computing and Software. “In India, a lot of the emphasis and funding goes to undergraduate programs, and whenever students go to graduate school, it's mostly in the United States.

“I will definitely be considering McMaster though, because it's a great school.”

In total, 106 students from India are doing their summer research at schools throughout British Columbia, New Brunswick and Ontario.

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