IBM Sri Lanka and University of Moratuwa announced several initiatives to help students to enhance their skills in GenNext Technologies and better position them in today’s fast changing IT world. Apart from providing the college with GenNext curriculum and IBM technology support, the students will be given access to project scenarios through eGURU in order to expose them to real life business problems. IBMers will also act as mentors to the students, equipping them with industry-aligned skills. Charitha N Wijewardane, Country General Manager, IBM Sri Lanka says, “We plan to engage engineering faculties of universities in Sri Lanka to foster greater innovation and technology collaboration. Our objective is to not only uncover new sources of talent, but also to expose students to new and emerging technologies.”
IBM will also offer two gold medals for the best graduate in Computer Science and Engineering and the best postgraduate student in Masters in Computer Science at the University of Moratuwa. According to Amol Mahamuni, Program Director, University Relations, IBM India, “IBM is teaming with University of Moratuwa to develop curricula and provide internship to encourage the development of industry sought after skills. There is no doubt that the IT industry is a key driver of the local economy. By expanding IBM’s programs to this region, we intend developing a loyal community of highly skilled professionals who continue to innovate around open standards and collaborative technologies.”
Commenting on the proposed collaboration with IBM, Prof Malik Ranasinghe, Vice Chancellor, University of Moratuwa said, “The emergence of the global economy is creating a highly skilled, interconnected workforce across time zones and cultures. IBM’s initiative will provide our students with the opportunity to grow their critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills, helping them cope with industry requirements around the world.”
University of Moratuwa is already a part of IBM sponsored ACM- ICPC Contest. This contest is hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and it is referred to as the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) hosted at international level. University of Moratuwa will now be a part of other pioneering contests offered through IBM's Academic Initiative programs which provide student programmers with a unique opportunity to develop innovative solutions using open standards-based IT tools under grueling real time situations.
The collaboration will further expose students at University of Moratuwa to IBM’s various Academic Initiatives that cover a large number of colleges and universities around the world. Under this initiatives, IBM partner closely with the local government and academia to create an enabling environment by allowing free access to IBM software, discounted hardware, course materials, training and curriculum development, helping Sri Lanka become an innovators’ nation by investing in skills development and technology enablement, empowering future workers with the right skills to be able to compete in the larger global workforce.