(MENAFN- KNN India) India and UK join hands to work as R & D partners in Solar Alliance and Nano Material Research.
Both sides would also work towards augmenting the India-UK Centre of Advanced Manufacturing through DST-RCUK cooperation linked to the Make in India Program and UK’s Catapult Centre program. The projects will be designed to deliver industry-relevant results that can be readily applied to current challenges in manufacturing supply chain, the Ministry of Science & Technology today said in a statement.
Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr. Harsh Vardhan led the Indian delegation at the 5th Indo-UK Science and Innovation Council Meeting (SIC) held at London earlier last week, co-chaired by Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science, UK.
Vardhan informed that as a part of the commitment to the Solar Alliance, the India-UK networked Centre on Solar Energy would be established. It would be linked to India’s renewable energy mission and UK’s Supergens Programme.
The research projects will focus on systems level design and development covering Solar energy generation, storage systems and grid integration particularly for micro-grid systems.
India would be investing Rs.50 crores over a period of five years with matching contribution from Research Council UK (RCUK) under the Newton-Bhabha Programme.
The Minister also noted that the Ministry of Earth Sciences of Government of India and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK are working on large observational campaign involving UK aircraft, Indian ships accompanied by surface observations primarily to address role of small scale processes to address variability of Indian monsoon leading to improved prediction of monsoon from short range to seasonal time scale.
The cooperation is aimed to yield high quality and high impact research outputs having industrial relevance, targeted towards addressing societal needs.
The Industrial R & D program was initiated in 2014 to support industry-led projects aimed to develop new Intellectual Property, technologies, processes and prototypes under the translation strand of the Newton-Bhabha Programme. In addition to the five ongoing projects, five new projects were identified for support in the areas of affordable health care, clean technology, electronic design and Internet of Things. (With PIB Inputs)