The idea of an Indo-French Cyber University came up during a meeting between Indian and French government officials in November 1999. In the beginning of 2000, applied mathematics were chosen as the first discipline to test the concept and the Toulouse University (TUN) was appointed as the coordinator on the French side.
In this context, a French delegation visited several Indian Institutions on an exploratory mission in May 2000. In parallel to these developments, a memorandum of understanding between the TUN and the Indian Institute of Science was signed at the end of 1999 and the collaboration between the two institutions was launched during the visit to Toulouse of a delegation of the IISc in June 2000.
The primary aim of the FICUS project is to create a (cyber)-platform devoted to information exchanges between India and France within the fields of research development, education, training, transfer of technology and dissemination of knowledge on a long term non-commercial basis. In the first phase, the project will concentrate on developing and delivering a set of post-graduate level courses on applied mathematics. It is envisaged that this will progressively develop into an Indo-French consortium encompassing a wide range of disciplines and courses at different levels.
The French request for Proposal “Campus Numériques” (July 2000 and July 2001) gave the opportunity to launch the project e-m@ths which could be considered as the first brick of the FICUS project.
