Cranfield University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tata Power’s Strategic Engineering Division (Tata Power SED) to explore the possibility of entering into a strategic partnership through research and development and academic study in the areas of defence-related engineering and emerging technologies.
These include areas such as MoDAF (The British Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework) for software systems, guns, military vehicles (including tracked) for both combat and launcher vehicles, GVA (generic vehicle architecture), and weapon systems.
The MoU was launched with a signing ceremony at DefExpo, a major international defence and security exhibition being held in India March 28-31 2016.
Dr Simon Harwood, director of Defence and Security at Cranfield University, said: “This MoU is an exciting development of Cranfield’s relationships with India and with an industrial powerhouse like Tata, we are excited to explore where this relationship will go.
“Cranfield has an extensive alumni network in India dating back to 1945 and the university is highly regarded for its expertise and career-improving opportunities in the area of science, technology, engineering and management. We hope to build stronger relationships with Tata Power SED, which has such a strong presence in the defence sector with a growing interest, for our mutual benefit.” he added.
At the signing ceremony, Rahul Chaudhry, CEO of Tata Power SED said: “Tata Power SED has been committed to ‘Make in India’ for over four decades.
“With the present Government giving the necessary emphasis on the defence sector, we would like to extend the ‘Make in India’ definition to ‘Create in India’ for which we would like to leverage the experience and expertise of Cranfield University in defining standards and implementing them in our processes for design and development of critical defence systems and sub-systems for the country. We have taken this approach to truly contribute to our country’s self-reliance.”
Tata Power SED will send its staff for short-term courses, which are expected to begin from June-July this year, said Venkat VSS Sastry, Head of Applied Mathemetics and Scientific Computing Group at the Swindon-based university.
“We will conduct short term courses, some will be for two weeks, but as the need develop we will customize the programme,” he said. fii-news.com
