As part of developing business, engineering and technology models for smart cities, students from the Institute for Business Innovation from Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, were here to collaborate with their counterparts from Indian institutions.
As many as 33 students carried out studies and came out with projects on energy, education, food and water, safety and security, housing and transportation and telecommunications, Executive Director of Garwood Centre for Corporate Innovation of the University, Solomon Darwin, said.
As part of their course, they had taken up one semester of study on open innovation focussed on India where 100 smart cities would be developed.
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Last year’s students visited GIFT city in Gujarat. U.S. President Barak Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a MoU for developing Ajmer, Allahabad and Visakhapatnam as smart cities.
“Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu asked us to prepare the framework for Visakhapatnam,” Prof. Darwin said.
The six projects would be presented at a programme in which Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu would participate in the second week.
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“Open innovation is a win-win situation for all the stakeholders,” said Prof. Darwin.
More than 200 Indian students forming 38 teams from various institutes, including IIT-Madras and Roorkee, IIIT-Bangalore, NIT-Jaipur, GITAM and Andhra University participated in the ‘Open Innovation Challenge-Smart cities’ organised by the Garwood Centre and Andhra University. “The collaboration will focus on developing business models,” Andhra University Vice-Chancellor G.S.N. Raju said.
The programme provided Andhra University students global exposure and an opportunity to compete with students from abroad, Professor of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, A.U. College of Engineering, Valli Kumari Vatsavayi, said.