Indian academics in Brunei, who are contributing to the education system of the oil-rich nation, have voiced hope that there would be greater collaboration with higher education institutions in India to establish closer links in research and teaching.
There are over 120 Indian nationals employed in various institutions and schools in Brunei including seven academics in the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), says Anita Binurul Zahrina, Vice Chancellor of the varsity which is also the country's oldest.
"At the same time, there are 842 Indian nationals currently studying in Brunei, where six of them are enrolled in UBD as full-time students, four in the undergraduate level and two in PhD programmes," she says.
Sheba David, who hails from Chennai and is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) in UBD, told PTI: "We have many students from India. Though a majority of them are here because their parents work here, there are others who have come all the way to study here."
According to her, the fees are quite normal.
Currently, she is supervising two Master students at IHS.
According to Zahrina, there are also active collaborations between India and Brunei at the tertiary education level.
"Since 2003, Brunei has participated in trainings under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation that covers various fields such as finance, accounting, auditing, environment, renewables, management and SMEs," she says.
With India set to become the world's third largest economy after 2030, she says Brunei looks forward to greater collaboration with Indian higher education institutions towards establishing closer links in research, teaching as well as student and staff mobility.
She also hopes that Indian students will join UBD's new flagship programme - a masters in public policy and management.
Another highpoint of India-Brunei ties in the field of education is the UBD-IBM Centre, which was officially launched by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah during the university's 25th anniversary celebration in 2011.
The UBD-IBM Centre is a state-of-the-art research centre
focusing on regional climate-weather modelling research, renewable energy and the impact of climate change on rainforests, agriculture and flooding.
The centre is currently focusing on collaborative research on cutting-edge smarter planet modelling topics using high performance computing facilities installed at UBD.
Apart from the UBD researchers, scientists from IBM Research Labs at India, the US and Brazil are actively participating in the projects initiated by the centre.
Sathyajith Mathew, an associate professor at the Faculty of Science in UBD and the technical lead for Renewable Energy at the UBD-IBM Centre, said there are three Indian students in his unit.
Mathew says there is a scholarship programme for researchers.
Sharmili Roy from Kolkata, who is doing her PhD in chemistry on biosensors, says: "I wanted to work on biosensors. I heard that UBD has very good facility in this regard. Then I got in touch with Minhaz Uddin Ahmed who is my supervisor here."
Roy, who has done her masters in Industrial Biotechnology, has "Nucleic acid amplification and their low-cost integration for point of care diagnostics" as her research topic.
Rahila Dilfar is a student of Biomedical Science from Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu whose father works in a technical college in Brunei.
Another Indian student is Noorul Amrin, who is in third year degree class in the faculty of science and hails from Uttar Pradesh.
