From Sheffield to India: Expanding Makerspace Partnerships and Engineering Education

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During a recent visit to India, Dr Pete Mylon explored new partnerships with leading institutions, sharing insights on student-led makerspaces like the iForge in Sheffield and practical learning. In this blog, he reflects on his experience and the exciting opportunities ahead, and how international collaboration is key to advancing engineering education. 

Mumbai and IITs

The first order of business was to meet Hemant Kanakia, Chair of Maker Bhavan Foundation (MBF), who fund and support makerspaces at Higher Education Institutes across India. We have been developing an idea for an international student competition that will capitalise on the makerspace facilities now available at many institutions and allow for an exchange of ideas between students from different contexts.

Together, I travelled with Hemant to IIT Bombay. The IITs were established in the 1950s and 60s and are amongst some of the top institutions globally for Engineering. Sheffield has formed a strategic partnership with IIT Bombay, and so I was able to apply to the Partnership Development Fund to support this collaboration.

At the campus, I met with Siddarth Tallur, who oversees their electronics makerspace, and Pratik Mutha from IIT Gandhinagar, who is in charge of the makerspace there. It was great to share our experiences and to see many similarities in the challenges we faced, and there was much enthusiasm for a collaborative competition.

Having successfully run Hackcessible at Sheffield for a number of years, and with assistive technology also an area of interest for a number of academics in the IITs, we decided on this as a theme and discussed some ideas for the logistics, with the intention for students from India to visit the UK and vice versa. We left with actions to follow up with our own institutions to firm up timings and funding, but mainly with excitement about the potential for all of our students to have an enriching experience.

While there, I looked around the Experiential Learning Lab (ELL), a curricular makerspace for EEE students, where they have made some great creative mechatronic projects. I met a couple of their technical staff who had come to Sheffield for ISAM and were really impressed with the iForge facilities. I was also able to speak to some of their students about their experiences. At the end of the afternoon, I headed to the airport, bound for Delhi.



Delhi

In Delhi, I had arranged some meetings at IIT Delhi and with MBF directors and donors but had a free day beforehand. So, I arranged with the University of Sheffield’s India office to visit some ‘counsellors’—agents who support Indian students applying to Sheffield and other international institutions. We briefed counsellors, outlining Sheffield’s USP as a practical Engineering experience and what the Diamond facilities, iForge, and co-curricular activities offer students. There was particular interest in Aerospace Engineering, with India having recently made advances in their national space programme, and students were excited by the achievement of Project Sunride.

Hemant Kanakia had arranged for us to meet Jay Dhariwal, Director of the IIT Delhi Makerspace, and next on the itinerary was a visit to his maker space and some of his staff.

They were to be found in a brand new building and are in the process of growing a student community by running workshops, but were keen to learn about student-led makerspaces and how the iForge in Sheffield runs.

Jay said, "It was good to learn from you about how the student-led makerspace came about and is running well at your university, the importance of community building, having flavours of creative explorations and problem-solving at your Makerspace, and all the exciting projects that the student clubs are building at the University of Sheffield—from rocketry to biomedical devices to projects in the sustainability realm and more."

Mumbai

In Mumbai we connected with a delegation from Sheffield that included academics from Engineering and the Vice Chancellor. We visited IIT Bombay to strengthen the strategic partnership we have built and met with a number of academics, including IIT Bombay’s Director.

Whilst there, I also managed to see another couple of makerspaces—the main ‘MakerSpace’ runs introductory courses for over 1400 students who make projects like drones and line follower robots, but is more akin to our taught Diamond laboratories.

The Tinkerers’ Lab, funded by MBF, has more of a student-led feel, although it is supervised by technical staff. Students are free to work on whatever projects they like, either for curriculum work or personal projects. It was great to connect with Damayanti Bhattacharya, MBF’s CEO, and chat about their vision to see makerspaces established in many more HEIs.

The trip ended at the Taj Lands End, overlooking the Arabian Sea, for a University of Sheffield alumni reception, hosted by the VC and organised by Hayley Chalmers from CAR. It was great to chat with alumni and supporters of the University and help to maintain a strong alumni community.

Now the real work begins as I work on the partnerships developed during the trip, and there should be a number of exciting collaborations over the coming months!