Electronics giant Samsung announced to expand its industry-academia programme to 70 engineering colleges in India, to help create a pool of talent for new-age R&D challenges.

Samsung PRISM (Preparing and Inspiring Student Minds) programme has so far been successful in driving engineering students to file patents and publish technical papers in cutting-edge domains such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and IoT.

Started in 2020, the programme has trained over 4,500 engineering students, and 1,000 professors have worked with Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B) engineers to deliver live projects successfully, said the company.

So far, over 300 teams have been recognised for their exceptional work and have been rewarded as well.

The R&D centre has filed over 3,500 patents in India and over 7,500 patents globally.

"Working with Samsung, young students have got hands-on exposure to live projects of an R&D centre and professors have got more practical industry experience. This is making students industry-ready and is furthering our vision of Powering Digital India," said Srimanu Prasad, Head of Tech Strategy, SRI-B.

As part of the programme, SRI-B collaborates with students and faculty at engineering colleges, giving them research as well as development projects to be executed over four to six months.

Students from engineering colleges that are in top positions of Government of India's National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings from across the country have participated in the programme so far, according to Samsung.

"Over the last two years, we have already seen strong results, with student teams filing patents and publishing technical papers in cutting edge domains," Prasad said.