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

During the year 2016, the Joint Working Group met in Oslo and reviewed the ongoing activities of cooperation and recommended to launch new joint project call on ICT and Bio-economy. Additionally, the need to initiate short term exchange of student visits from both sides and hold bilateral workshops in the fields of Nano science & technology and on Renewable energy.

The third meeting of the India-New Zealand Joint S&T Committee was held at New Delhi in May 2016 which recommended continuation of two ongoing projects in the area of Food &Dairy Technology. Reports on two seminars, conducted on Reinforced Infrastructure in Auckland and on Oost-harvest Technologies in Sonepat were also presented.

Following the S&T Joint Committee meeting held in Mexico City, the two sides have approved 14 novel projectsin the areas covering health, seismology, renewable energy and waste water treatment. Several other projects in the fields of seismicity, nanomaterials, renewable energy, drug development and water technology are beign supported under India-Mexico bilateral program.

The relationship with Japan has been substantially strengthened by establishing Indo-Japan Joint Laboratories in the areas of (i) Architecting Intelligent Dependable Cyber Physical System Targeting IoT and Mobile Big Data Analysis (ii) Security in the Internet of Things Space (iii) Data Science-based Farming Support System for Sustainable Crop Production under Climatic Change have been agreed to support. A new reciprocal fellowship programme for young researcher has been agreed with JSPS, Japan.

Following the Joint S&T Committee meeting held in Rome, several initiatives to re-launch cooperation in science, technology and innovation were agreed including the launch of a call for bilateral scientific R&D projects of significance. Several areas were identified for joint projects, namely ICT, energy, environment & sustainable agriculture,health care, biotechnology & medicine, nanotechnology & advanced materials, physics & astrophysicsand technology applied to the cultural & natural heritage.

Govt. of India and Israel have agreed to step up the collaboration in the next two years by providing U.S. dollar 1 million from each side to support novel R&D projects in the cutting edge areas of ‘Big Data Analytics in Health Care’ and ‘Security in Cyber Space’. The joint projects would be awarded to the partnering academic and R&D laboratories from the two countries. As a part of these projects, student exchanges would be encouraged in order to connect the next generation and sustain the pipeline of future collaboration.

The Indo-Iran joint activities in science and technology by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science & Technology of the Indian Republic and the Centre for International Scientific Cooperation (CISC), Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT) of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are based on the General Agreement of 2003 on Scientific and Technical Cooperation between Indian and Iranian Governments.

A Joint Science & Technology Committee was held at Budapest in October
2016 which recommended award of four new proposals in addition to ten ongoing projects in the
areas of Mathematics, Earth Science, Biology & Medical Sciences, Chemical Sciences, and Physics
& Astrophysics.

The ’Project-based Personnel Exchange Programme’(PPP) is a bilateral research promotion programme that is the result of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concluded in 1998 between the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India.The basic aim of PPP is to strengthen the cooperation between Indian and German research groups that are working jointly on a particular scientific project. 

Till now, several programs in focused research areas have been supported by the research funding agencies of both the nations.These include (i) Indo-French Centre for Applied Mathematics (IFCAM), between DST and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); (ii) DST-Inria program in Information and Communication Science & Technology; (iii) DST-ANR joint projects in the areas of Neuroscience and Engineering Sciences.