India, UK to initiate new scientific project

NEW DELHI: India and Britain have agreed to set up a 16-million pound joint corpus for strengthening cooperation in the area of science and technology.

Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said India has proposed to provide a matching grant to UK's proposal to earmark up to eight million pounds for research from its 12 million United Kingdom Education and Research Initiative (UKERI) fund corpus.

Sibal said that during his four-day visit to the UK as part of his three-nation tour including the US and Mexico in June, he and his British counterpart Lord Saintsbury jointly chaired the first UK-India Science and Innovation Council meeting.

Under the initiative, it was proposed to strengthen networking of stem cell, animal biotechnology and next generation communication technologies through setting up of "virtual centres" for the purpose.

Cooperation would also be forged in areas of advanced materials and nano-technologies, weather science and climate change, he said.

The areas would also include new energies with emphasis on hydrogen energy.

Sibal said the visit to the three countries were aimed at strengthening the ongoing science and technology cooperation with these "three established partners".

His visit to the US included a meeting with the Science Advisor to the US president Jack Marburger.

He said the meeting focused on promotion of "innovation through policy support mechanism".

Sibal said the high-level Indo-UK innovation council would include eminent scientist C N R Rao, CSIR Director General R A Mashelkar and Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology T Ramasami.

During his visit to Mexico, Sibal held discussions in the areas of water management, earthquake, seismology and alternate energy.

The Minister said two joint workshops in this regard would be held in India and Mexico.

He said indepth deliberations were held on water management strategies for linking best practices for Delhi and Mexico City on a project mode being drawn up.

The coordinators for the joint workshop has already been decided and an Delhi IITan A K Gossain would head the Indian side for the workship in India in November.

Gustavo Viniegra would head the Mexican team during the workshop.

Another workshop on seismology would be organised in Mexico early next year, the Minister said.

Asserting that science and technology was the key to strengthening trade ties with any country, Sibal said it was essential to lay stress on research and development and other innovations as part of the overall strategy.