Fifteen leading American universities have joined hands with the Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Science and Technology and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham to enhance higher education and research in the country.

A memorandum of understanding to this effect was signed on Wednesday.

The US signatories would depute their faculty to teach and lead research programmes that would be accessible to a wide cross section of colleges and universities in the country via Amrita's e-learning facility and ISRO's Edusat, an official release said.

The programme would focus initially on engineering and computer science, information and communication technology, it said adding course would also include materials science, biotechnology and bioinformatics, nanotechnology, medical sciences and management sciences.