Vice Provost for International Affairs Wendy Wolford and a Cornell delegation visited Asia in April. The trip began in Seoul, South Korea, for this year's Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference before traveling to India to meet with Cornell alumni and explore partnerships with institutions in the country.

Alumni in Asia Meet for APLC

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From April 5–7, Cornell alumni from around the region gathered to celebrate entrepreneurs at Cornell and highlight discussions about AI and media. The Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference, founded in 2007, occurs annually. President Martha Pollack and many Cornell faculty were among this year's speakers.

With Cornell’s vast alumni network—providing mentorship, guidance, and opportunity—Cornell’s newest entrepreneurs have a sizable advantage, including here in Korea where more than 1,200 Cornell alumni are active members of the Cornell Club of Korea.

Global Cornell Convenes in India

The Global Cornell team met with alumni and institutional partners in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Chennai to build connections for future partnerships between Cornell and India, which already includes an alumni network of over 1,600 and Global Hubs partner universities. The Global Cornell delegation included Wolford, Christine Potter and college faculty and staff members Miranda Swanson (Cornell Engineering), Lena DeTar (College of Veterinary Medicine), Manigandan Lejeune Virapin (CVM), and Caroline Yancey (CVM).

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The group began their trip to Bangalore with a visit to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), where they toured the Biosafety Level-3 Laboratory at the Centre for Infectious Disease and Research, met with the chair of the international relations office Abhishek Kumar Singh and spent time with Anurag Kumar (Engineering PhD '81), the previous director of the IISc, discussing insights on how Cornell and IISc might collaborate.

Cornell faculty from CVM visited with director Prashanth Srinias and other researchers at the Institute of Public Health Bangalore to discuss developments in public and planetary health and public health policies in India.   

The trip continued with a stop in Mumbai to visit the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and meet with Sudarshan Kumar, dean of international relations, Varsha Apte, head of computer science and engineering, and D. Manjunath, professor in charge of the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science, Department of Electrical Engineering.

While in Mumbai, an alumni gathering hosted by the Cornell Alumni Club of Mumbai included a keynote given by Infosys CEO and managing director Salil Parekh '87, followed by a faculty panel moderated by Wolford.

In Chennai, the last stop of the trip, the delegation visited the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), where they met with faculty from the departments of humanities and social sciences, management studies, and sustainability, followed by a tour of the IITM Research Park and lunch with metallurgical and materials engineering professor Tiju Thomas (PhD Engineering '10).

Wolford and Potter also connected with the head of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, Anshul Mishra (City and Regional Planning '21), several members of the planning department, the head of the planning department at Anna University, and IITM professor Tiju Thomas (Engineering PhD '10).

Along the way, delegation members immersed themselves in the rich tapestry of Indian culture, savored aromatic spices at bustling street markets, took cooking lessons, and toured the Elephanta Caves UNESCO World Heritage Site.