By Daniel P. Tapaoan, Jr. and Crisdeniele H. Clemente

DroneAcharya Aerial Innovations Ltd. (DAIL), an India-based company that specializes in geospatial data application, has tied up with Mariano Marcos State University for the establishment of a drone school in Ilocos Norte. 

This was reflected in a memorandum of understanding signed between DAIL Founder and Managing Director Prateek Srivastava and MMSU President Shirley C. Agrupis yesterday, August 14, at the University Teatro Ilocandia. 

Srivastava was represented by Ms. Marcia Chen, the company’s senior manager for business development and digital marketing. Dr. Nathaniel Alibuyog, MMSU vice president for research and extension; Dr. Mee Jay Domingo, internationalization, linkages and partnerships director; and Engr. Lawrence John Tagata, public-private partnerships director, also joined the MOU signing. 

The signing ceremony coincided with the two-day Coastal Engineering Summit organized by Coastal Engineering Research Center (COASTER) and the Department of Science and Technology. 

In the five-year MOU, DAIL and MMSU agreed to offer drone and geographic information system-related courses, trainings and workshops. 

To fulfill the joint venture, the university will provide classrooms and office spaces, and give access to hardware, software, and other tangible resources for the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). For its part, the company will deliver the content and curriculum of the courses, and grant MMSU students and faculty access to drones and other applications. It will also provide at least four internships to junior and senior college students every year. 

President Agrupis hopes the tie-up will capacitate faculty and researchers in coastal engineering, disaster risk assessment, and coastal flood modeling. “May this partnership be beneficial to students in the fields of agriculture, engineering, geoinformatics, and data science for internships and future job opportunities,” she added. 

For her part, Ms. Chen expressed gratitude to the university for the collaboration, and assured that “the DroneAcharya will provide the best technology and services to support all projects that we will carry out together.”

The partnership is also expected to support the MMSU-based COASTER Center as it ventures on the modern-day methods of data-gathering and decision-making in the field of coastal engineering.

DAIL was established in 2017 as a drone startup under Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation Limited. It aims to train the next generation to become extremely skilled in using unmanned aerial vehicles, and to become a major player in the drone industry in India. (HLY/JVBT, StratCom)