Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt of India

During the year 2016, Hon’ble Minister for S&T and ES visited UK in June 2016 for the meeting of Science & InnovationCouncil (SIC) which was co-chaired with UK Minister for Universities & Science in London. The SIC reviewed all ongoing scientific engagements between the two countries and recommended further areas of cooperation covering clean Energy, efficient built environment, data science, weather modeling, marinesciences, agricultural biotechnology and human & child health to be pursued under Newton Bhabha Program.

The cooperation is supporting several joint research projects. In the joint committee meeting held in New Delhi in December 2016,  both sides agreed to collaborate through research projects in the identified areas of national priority including human health, renewable energy, photonics and geospatial technologies. A unique archeological atlas using satellite data for regional connectivity in prominent Buddhist sites of eight countries has been compiled under the India-Thailand S&T collaboration. 

Several projects are under implementation under the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Program.The program on research in the field of glaciology has been extended for the period 2016-19 which would include funding of joint R&D projects and training programs for capacity building. The new Academia-Industry Training (AIT) Program launched between DST and Swissnex supports promising Swiss andIndian researchers in transforming their research into market applications. 

Against the joint call between DST-VINNOVA, joint projects on embedded systems are beingimplemented. The future cooperation envisages new areas of engagement through joint R&D projects in applied areas of industrial relevance covering Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Information & Communication Technology, Technologies for Eco-innovation, Sustainable Cities and Automotive.Under the maiden DST-VR (Sweden Research Council) call twelve projects have been agreed for joint support in areas of health sciences, genomics, bioinformatics and synthetic biology.

Several research projects are being supported in the areas of Nanotechnology, Robotics & Engineering Sciences; Biotechnology including Health & Medical Sciences and Renewable Energy.

DST, India and DST, S. Africa have agreed to support new joint projects in the areas of indigenous knowledge systems, agriculture biotechnology, and astronomy. Additionally, during the year 2016-17, DST-India and DST-South Africa have signed a MOU for establishing cooperation in grass-root innovations which will enable co-development of affordable technologies, technology demonstration, capacity building,and sharing of open source technologies between India and S. Africa.

Several projects in the areas of digital image processing, advancedmanufacturing processes, sensors for various applications, smart textile, solar cells, water technology and health are being supported.  DST and the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science & Sports have agreed for  the launch of next R&D project call covering health & biotechnology, new materials, renewable energy, smart cities and ICT.

Several joint projects in the fields of Materials and Energy, Chemistry, Biology & Technology for medicine are being supported

During the year 2016-17, under the DST- Russian Foundation of Basic Research (RFBR) program, twenty three new projects were approved in addition to fifty one ongoing projects under this basic science cooperation framework.

During the  year 2016-17, eighteen projects have been identified by both sides for the support in the areas covering basic sciences and fundamental research.