New Delhi, Nov. 18 : Canada will be featured as the partner country for a Higher Education Summit organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in New Delhi November 25-26, 2008.

More than 40 Canadian institutions will participate in the two-day Summit with the theme: Higher Education at the Crossroads: Imperatives for Policy and Practice.

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Canadian High Commission in Delhi have partnered with FICCI for the event in which more than 500 delegates from around the world are expected to participate.

“The FICCI Higher Education Summit is a great opportunity to both showcase Canada’s excellence in higher education and to promote partnerships and collaborations between Canadian and Indian educational institutions,” said H. E. Joseph Caron, Canada’s High Commissioner to India.

David Johnston, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Waterloo, will be the keynote speaker at the Summit. The Canadian delegation includes the presidents of Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Ms. Claire Morris) and Association of Community Colleges of Canada (Mr. James Knight), university and college presidents and vice-presidents from across Canada, and provincial and federal government representatives. Among Indian delegates, there will be vice-chancellors, deans and heads of prestigious educational institutes and top-level government officials.

The FICCI Higher Education Summit builds on momentum gained by a series of Canada-India higher-education conferences and tours of institutions held in the past year, and the Canada-India Agreement for Scientific and Technological Cooperation signed in 2005.

The Canadian High Commission, on the sidelines of FICCI Education summit, is also organizing a seminar titled "Indo-Canadian Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation & Linkages" on November 24. The seminar is expected to be attended by close to 100 people from both industry and academia, and will have eminent speakers from various Canadian universities including Waterloo, Saskatchewan, Regina, Laval and Simon Fraser and on the Indian side from IIT, Delhi University, CSIR, TERI and Delhi College of Engineering.

Canada recently announced two new research and scholarship programs designed to attract world-class doctoral students and researchers to Canada''s universities. The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) Program, open to both international and Canadian candidates, will offer 500 scholarships in the area of social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, engineering, and health.

The Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Program, will award 20 Chair holders and their research teams up to Canadian 10 million dollars over seven years to establish ambitious research programs at Canadian universities. Both these initiatives offer an expanded scope for research collaboration opportunities between researchers from Indian and Canadian universities. (ANI)