KHARAGPUR: India launched the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) scheme to boost the quality of the country's higher education through international collaboration.

The human resource development (HRD) ministry initiative was launched at IIT Gandhinagar by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, and was flagged off parallelly at IIT Kharagpur in the presence of R. Subrahmanyam, additional secretary for technical education in the ministry.

GIAN aims at bringing high quality academicians to participate in delivering courses in Indian institutions, said Subrahmanyam.

"It is inter-connected with the 'Make in India' campaign and the IMPRINT programme," he said.

The inaugural courses are 10-day courses -- '3D Digitisation for Cultural Heritage' at IIT Gandhinagar and 'Orthopaedic Biomechanics: Implants and Biomaterials' at IIT Kharagpur.

They are among 201 courses approved to be conducted under GIAN so far from among 495 courses proposed by various higher education institutes in India.

IIT Kharagpur is the nodal institution and national coordinator for this flagship programme.

Irani said the courses will have a credit-based approach.

The orthopaedic biomechanics course will be taught by professor Nico Verdonschot from the Netherlands who is a leading international figure in the field of computer modelling of orthopaedic biomechanics.

More than 350 academicians from 38 countries are participating in this programme in 13 broad disciplines. It currently includes 68 national institutes.
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