A meeting was held with the Vice Chancellor, Senior Prof. Sampath Amaratunge, Prof. Ranil de Silva, Director World Class University Project, USJ, and the Delegates from James Cook University (JCU), Australia headed by Prof. Marcus Lane, Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ronald White, Dean, Science and Engineering, Mr. Vignesh Vijayaraghavan, Head of International Recruitment and Mr. David Samuel, Regional Head – Sri Lanka and Maldives.
JCU is known as the World’s No. 1 University for Marine Biology and is one of the leading Tropical Universities in Australia with its cutting-edge ecological and environmental research studies, promoting an intellectually stimulating multidisciplinary environment for its students. (www.jcu.edu.au/international)
Successful collaborative concepts were discussed for Student exchange, Joint/Split Double M.Phil/ Ph.D, Credit transfer programmes on the fields of Marine Biology, Aquaculture Science and Technology, Fisheries Science, Biodiversity Conservation, Data Science, Urban Development, and Engineering, Tourism in multidisciplinary areas with graduate employment opportunities. External degree programmes on Business Management and Commerce fields were also conversed during this fruitful session. Furthermore, a stepping stone towards an academic establishment on Tourism and Hospitality Management was introduced. These key accomplishments will further allow the exchange of research material, databases and joint academic activities such as workshops, seminars and collaborative research work that would ultimately uplift the world ranking of USJP in the future. Prof. Ranil de Silva to explore prospective academic collaborations between JCU and USJ in order to Sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the near future. The delegates also visited the Department of Zoology, Faculty of Applied Sciences and The Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce, USJ to further explore possible collaborative initiations with USJ.