Ambassador of India Visits Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon greets Ambassador Shankar

Carnegie Mellon University welcomed Meera Shankar, Ambassador of India to the United States, to campus on April 29, 2011.

While at the university, the Ambassador toured CMU's CyLab, one of the leading academic cybersecurity research centers in the United States. The center collaborates with the government of India to provide training and education in advanced cyber practices and innovation.

The CyLab tour featured a demonstration of recent advances in biometric security technologies — focusing on the creation of a next-generation identity system, to automatically detect and label various facial landmarks on faces.

The technology has broad applications for a variety of sectors worldwide.

"Certainly [this work] has an interest and application for all countries, particularly for India where we are really grappling with these issues," said Ambassador Shankar. "Not just at the government level, but also at the industry."

For several years, CMU has enjoyed a partnership with SSN University in Chennai, which provides graduate-level education through a successful Advanced Software Engineering program.

CMU also has more than 900 students from India, by far its largest contingent of international students. The university employs more than 100 faculty from India, and has more than 1,200 alumni in the country, its largest concentration outside the United States.

The Ambassador's visit was part of a two-day visit to Pittsburgh for a forum on India's important relationships with the Pittsburgh region.

The Pittsburgh region has significant economic ties to India with such corporations as Heinz, Mastech, and Alcoa having operations in the country. Additionally, several Indian companies such as Caliber Technologies and Technosoft have chosen Pittsburgh as a site for their American services.