India, Jan. 13 -- The five-day Indo-European Conference on Mathematics being held at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) from Monday will play a crucial role in shaping future international collaborative research, according to professor at Princeton University, USA, Manjul Bhargava, a Padma Bhushan awardee. Drawing a historical parallel with the collaboration between Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy that proved to be globally transformative, Prof Bhargava said international academic engagements like the conference being held at Pune are vital for the advancement of mathematics.

The conference, the first of its kind in India, was inaugurated on Monday at SPPU's Swarajya Rakshak Dharmaveer Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Auditorium. The...