Address to Faculty

Thapar University, Patiala, India

15th September

 

Good afternoon,

It’s a great pleasure to be here, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity. I was last here two years ago, as a Guest of Honour at the 2015 Convocation Ceremony. Our two institutions have developed much stronger relations since then. I’ve spent a wonderful morning visiting your teaching and design laboratories and the New Learning Centre, and it was a privilege to inaugurate the new Girls’ Residences.

In our time together this afternoon I’d like to talk to you a bit about Trinity’s relationship with Thapar University and how we might continue developing it; and I’d like to talk about Trinity’s recent and planned initiatives in innovation and entrepreneurship, and future developments in Trinity’s School of Engineering, and I’ll also talk about some of the developments in Higher Education worldwide which affect us all.

But first let me congratulate you on your recent ranking, which is a tribute to staff, management and students. Trinity also went up in all the rankings this year, after some difficult years of economic recession in Europe. I’m delighted that progress and achievement in our two institutions is being recognised internationally.

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This partnership with Thapar University is the only partnership of its kind that Trinity has embarked on, and it’s probably unique in its structure globally. We are blazing a trail here, and of course both our institutions want to do everything we can to maximise the opportunities of our partnership for staff and students.

Many of you have been to Trinity College Dublin - some frequently and for long periods of time. Likewise our professors have visited Thapar on many occasions and we are learning how teaching and research work in India.
One of the successes to date has been the engagement and trust built between colleagues from both our institutions.

It’s a credit to you that the 18 Thapar students, who have been with Trinity on the Pilot over the last two years, have excelled, winning several prestigious awards.

We look forward to welcoming the current group of 39 who are joining us this week.

Our two universities have successfully matched our Curriculums in the areas of Computer Science and Engineering, and we are looking at how we can further propel ourselves to the forefront in Engineering pedagogy in the 21st Century.

Independent learning, creativity, communication, responsibility and leadership are all central to the Trinity Education Project, which is an ambitious university-wide project to renew the undergraduate curriculum to ensure that we’re preparing our students appropriately for global changes in the workplace and society.

I’ll go into more detail on the Trinity Education Project in a bit because it ties directly into our initiatives in innovation and entrepreneurship. We will be rolling out changes in the undergraduate curriculum in the next academic year, and of course Thapar students coming to Trinity will directly benefit.

Progress is well under way on the contemporization/internationalisation of the undergrad programme in Thapar in collaboration with Trinity and challenges in this implementation are being systematically addressed.

However, the contemporization programme alone will not establish Thapar as an international centre of technical excellence. The development of a research-led graduate programme is key. Thapar has now established international links with Trinity College and with the universities of Groningen and Waterloo, which have a track record in research-led teaching and in industry collaboration. The aim is for Thapar to develop research-led programmes, with the added value of linking Indian industry and development.

We welcome the iconic IT library facility being developed here, and look forward to it being deployed to its fullest potential.

On the immediate staffing front, the L.M. and B.M. Thapar Professorships have been established, with the role to translate research activity between the two institutions. We could expect these to be filled by early 2018. In addition, five post doc positions have been awarded to commence in September 2017. These are aligned with:

Garret O'Donnell             -- Additive Manufacturing / Applications
Anil Kokaram                  -- Video Signal Processing
Roger West                     -- Sustainable Concrete Technology
Carol O'Sullivan  x 2        -- Graphics and Animation

As well as being exposed to state of the art equipment, the researchers will be embedded in thematic research groups and directly engaged on funded research projects. The post-docs will also engage with the PhD research students and masters level projects. Shortly after arrival, the post-docs will be expected to formulate a research plan in consultation with the PI and will contribute to publication and seminar activities. 

In terms of research and education collaborations, I should mention the satellite project, which we discussed earlier today with your board member, Dr Pillai, and our own professor, Peter Gallagher (Birr telescope- I-LOFAR development) who joined us by Skype from Ireland. Technology is a constant, and work between students of our two universities on such a project will greatly enhance the reputation of both our institutions.

Further down the line, we look forward to identifying thematic areas of mutual interest to Trinity and Thapar, with a view to eventually establishing complementary – rather than directly duplicated - facilities at each institution. The training of the post-docs will be key here, as well as input from the Thapar chairs.

In parallel, we will identify supporting industry in India and Ireland who will drive initiatives and, in some cases, may fund laboratories. To this end, it may be useful to appoint an industry liaison strategist to look after targeted/strategic internships and to explore supporting funding mechanisms.

Trinity is extremely well-placed to drive these, and other initiatives, forward, and to partner Thapar in these ambitious undertakings.

I will turn now to Trinity’s recent and planned strategies in Engineering and across the university.

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Many of you are familiar with how we do things in Trinity. You know that we are a large multidisciplinary university of 24 Schools across three faculties; that we have a singular mission in education and research as described at www.tcd.ie/strategy and that we encourage collaboration on all fronts: between our disciplines; globally with other institutions around the world; and with industry.

In short, we like to take a comprehensive and joined-up approach. We don’t think disciplines, or scholars, or institutions should only function on their own. We believe that the most exciting research happens at the interface of disciplines and that our campus is invigorated by having an international body of students and staff, as by external links with industry and policy-makers.

This comprehensive approach is proving successful. To name some recent highlights:

• In terms of research, in January Trinity joined the prestigious League of European Research Universities, or LERU.

There are only 23 members in LERU and they include Europe’s highest ranked research universities such as Oxford, Zurich, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Paris-Sud, Cambridge, Utrecht and others. The network counts 230 Nobel Prize winners and Field Medal winners among its staff and students and is a key influencer on European research policy.  

• In terms of entrepreneurship, we just found out that this year, for the third year running, Trinity has been rated the number one university in Europe for educating entrepreneurs, according to evaluation by research firm, PitchBook, based on the number of undergraduate alumni who go on to create companies that secure first-round venture capital funding. Trinity is the only European university in PitchBook’s global Top 50. You can download the pitchbook report form this website: https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/2017-universities-report

• And in terms of global engagement, Trinity has become the first university outside the United States to join the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad, or CASA. CASA is a non-profit organisation, formed in 2014 to facilitate student mobility internationally through the establishment of study-centres around the world.

CASA member institutions include the world-ranking universities of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Vanderbilt. Trinity is the 10th member. In January this year the first Trinity students were part of the CASA group studying in Havana, Cuba.

These are just a few of our recent highlights. They underline the success of our strategic planning and initiatives.

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In Trinity, we understand that this is a period of significant transformational change in higher education, globally:

• New and merging disciplines;
• the technology revolution;
• globalisation and the resulting student mobility;
• new models of funding, and the emergence of for-profit universities; and
• changing employer needs and the student focus on employability

are all contributing to a transformed higher education landscape.

Regardless of whether we welcome these changes or not, universities have to be prepared for them, because they are happening.

In Trinity, our initiatives are strongly premised on our understanding of these changes. For instance, I mentioned already the Trinity Education Project, our ambitious university-wide project to renew the undergraduate curriculum. This is about building on our traditional pedagogical strengths to ensure that we’re adapting appropriately to global changes in the workplace and society, including more flexible job practices and the growth of the digital workplace.

The Trinity Education Project has agreed a set of graduate attributes which will shape the kind of education we offer. There are four graduate attributes:

Students will acquire these attributes through academic and co- and extra-curricular activities. Some of the changes we’re making include:

• More diverse styles of assessment – moving away from exams to assess students on, for instance, by peer-to-peer assessment – and recognising assessment as ‘formative’ rather than ‘summative’;
• More team and group work;
• more opportunity for students to take modules outside their core discipline – for example we will have “Trinity Electives” with students obliged to take special modules outside their core discipline and linked to Trinity’s research strengths; and
• continued emphasis on taking on leadership roles in clubs and societies, and in fundraising and volunteering.

More information can be found at https://www.tcd.ie/academic-services/tep/

Let me focus now on how the changes we are making will impact engineering.

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Engineering is a core discipline for Trinity. The School of Engineering was founded over 170 years ago, in 1842, making us one of the earliest universities in the world to teach engineering.

It’s a large and prominent School; collectively, staff have published over 1,000 academic research papers over the last five years. There are three research centres located within the School, , and staff contribute significantly to three of Ireland’s most important research centres: CONNECT, the research centre for future networks and communications, ADAPT the centre for digital content, and CRANN, the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices.

And Engineering is now at the epicentre of one of the university’s most exciting initiatives: the Engineering, Energy and Environment Institute, which we’re calling E3.

Many of you will have heard something about E3. An industry-academic collaboration space, it will be one of the first institutes globally to integrate engineering, technology and the natural sciences, at scale, to address challenges of a livable planet.

E3 will co-locate staff from the Schools of Engineering, Natural Science and Computer Science and Statistics, and it will link-up with our Centres for nanomaterials and raw materials. It will be a key partner for government, industry and NGOs, in Ireland and internationally, in meeting the emerging opportunities in energy and engineering design, while sustaining natural capital.

There brochures of the E3 project are available and have been circulated for your information.

E3 is being developed in two phases: the learning institute, which we’re calling the E3  Learning Foundry, and the E3 Research Institute.

The E3 Foundry is already substantially funded and it will open in three years’ time. It will change the way that engineering, natural sciences and computer science students learn, both in terms of content – with more focus on the challenges of managing the earth’s resources – and in terms of method – with more peer-to-peer learning and smaller group teaching. The new building will reflect the new curriculum – for instance it will have no large lecture theatres, but many student-bookable rooms to meet and brainstorm. It will be a wonderful learning environment, which I know your students will exhilarate in.

The Foundry is the first phase of E3. The second phase is the E3 Research Institute which will bring researchers together with industry and policy-makers in an interdisciplinary environment. They will focus on bringing solutions rapidly to market and will be instrumental in the development of new energy solutions and a more sustainable approach to natural capital. The Research Institute will also be housed in a new impressive building – it will be in the Trinity Tech Campus, close by our main campus, on Grand Canal Dock, which is the area in Dublin that is developing into a kind of cluster because it’s where Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other tech multinationals have their European headquarters, as well as Irish start-ups.

In Trinity our researchers already have substantial collaborations with these companies; locating the E3 Research Institute in the centre of Dublin’s ‘Silicon Docks’ will facilitate many more collaborations.

We’re tremendously excited about E3. It addresses, of course, a fundamental need for the planet, and in tandem with other developments such as the Trinity Business School, it will unleash the creativity and innovation potential of staff and students.

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Let me talk a bit about this creativity and innovation on campus. One of the most exciting developments of the past decade in Trinity has been the growth in innovation at all levels of the university, including at undergraduate level.

To date, Trinity’s campus companies – or spin-out companies - have generated over 3,500 jobs, €1.3 billion in exports and over €500 million in venture investment. And all this has happened within the last eight years. Trinity went from creating just one campus company a year between 1986 and 2008, to creating seven companies a year.

We achieved this by revising the procedure for campus company formation in 2009 and establishing a new Office of Corporate Partnership and Knowledge Exchange in 2014, which brings under one roof all the functions necessary to support research collaboration and commercialisation.  

This means that our staff and postgrads are ever increasingly involved in hugely successful spin-out companies such as Iona Technologies, Havok, and Opsona Therapeutics.

In the past few years we’ve extended this innovation and entrepreneurial success to our undergraduates. Four years ago, we set up a student incubation programme, LaunchBox, which has proved hugely successful. In its first three years, it supported 24 student companies which went on to raise a total of €1.2 million in venture capital.

Engineering, business and computer science undergraduates have featured strongly as founders of successful LaunchBox companies. To give some examples:

• iDLY Systems is a software-as-a-service company offering digital identification services to universities and institutions in Ireland. It was set up by a mechanical engineering and a computer science students after they launched the highly successful Trinity Digital Student ID.

• FallSafe is a fast system to help elderly call for immediate assistance when falls happen, thus improving care and reducing the 400 million euro economic costs related to falls in Ireland. The system comprises a mobile app and a wearable emergency button. It was founded by a computer science & business student and an industrial engineering student.

• HaySaver is a temperature and humidity sensor that gets inserted directly into your hay bales to assess for nutritional losses, mould defects and over-heating which can damage your forage. It was established by two mechanical engineering students.

• TouchTech secures online payments by using fingerprints and eye-scans. It is one of the earliest LaunchBox companies – set up by an engineering and a management science student. It now supplies customers, principally banks, in Ireland, the UK and Europe and has announced 40 job creations.

These companies were created, scaled up and marketed, from conception to product, by students. We’re hugely proud of them.

This is just the beginning. Our current and planned initiatives are focused on further unleashing the creative, entrepreneurial and innovation capacity of staff and students.

For instance, the new Trinity Business School will open next year in a state-of-the-art building on campus. It’s to be co-located with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub, and will also include a 600-seat auditorium; a public space for students to meet and exchange ideas; ‘smart’ classrooms with the latest digital technology; space for prototyping and company incubation projects; and a rooftop conference room.

The Trinity Business School will have a cataclysmic effect on our already impressive success in innovation and entrepreneurship, as will E3.  Commercialisation and entrepreneurship will be embedded into both the E3 Learning Foundry and the E3 Research Institute.

With focus on combatting climate change, finding new energy sources, and encouraging sustainability and biodiversity, we expect staff and students to make ground-breaking discoveries and to contribute towards new ways of living on this planet together. This is essential. Collectively, as a species, we need to rethink and rework our relationship to the planet and to each other. No one country or institution can do this alone, but we can all make a contribution. I look forward to staff and students in Thapar University and Trinity College Dublin working towards solutions together.

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I thank you for your attention. For me it has been very useful and interesting and instructive to focus on the partnership between our two universities and how we can best develop this, capitalising on our strengths in education, research and innovation, and always taking into account and preparing for the changes that are affecting the global higher education landscape.

This year is a special one in Trinity – because we are celebrating our 425th anniversary – that’s 425 years since the University was founded by charter by Queen Elizabeth the First. To celebrate this, we have produced a book, Trinity 425, which I look forward to presenting to you later.

Like all venerable institutions, Trinity has enjoyed a very interesting, sometimes turbulent history. As I’ve mentioned, this year we also celebrate 170 years since the founding of our Engineering School, and it is exactly 255 years since Trinity first made direct engagement with India - in 1762 the College appointed  Mir Aulad Ali, an Indian Muslim, as Professor of Arabic, Hindustani, and Persian.

Our engagement with India grew substantially during the 20th century as we began to welcome many students, particularly to the Medical and Engineering Schools.

In the 21st century, engagement has gone to another level entirely. As I’ve said this partnership between Trinity and Thapar University is probably unique in its structure globally, and I believe it will become a model to other universities wishing to foster closer partnerships.

And this year is historic for Ireland-India relations - and more specifically, Trinity-India relations - because the country got a new Prime Minister – though in Ireland we don’t say ‘Prime Minister’ we say ‘Taoiseach’ – and our new Taoiseach is called Leo Varadkar and he is the son of an Irish mother and an Indian father who moved to Ireland in the early 1970s.

When Leo was elected there were headlines around the world because he was the first son of an immigrant to be Prime Minister of Ireland and he is also young, just 38 years old.

He has many cousins, uncles and aunts on his father’s side still living in Mumbai. Naturally, they were extremely proud, and Irish journalists went to interview them and we learnt that he gets his political talent from his father’s side because two of his uncles were involved in the struggle for Indian independence; one of them was arrested and served a year in jail as a political prisoner . (1) 

He is a graduate of Trinity, from the School of Medicine and he is in fact the first Trinity graduate to be elected to the office of Taoiseach, so we are very proud of him. And I like to point to him as an example to our students of flexibility: most young people who dream of running the country don’t necessarily study medicine, they rather do Political Science.

But the way the world is going, your primary degree does not define your future career and what you learn in one field can be applied to another. In Medicine, Leo learnt critical thinking, independent judgement and responsibility - which are proving very useful in his new job as Prime Minister.

This is the mindset that we seek to embed in our students.

Openness to other cultures is fundamental to resilience and creativity. In this historic year for India-Ireland relations, let’s our two universities build on our remarkable partnership and make ever stronger connections in research, education and innovation.

Thank you.

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