On the 19th of June, 2017 Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, GoI (DST, GoI) visited the Russian Federation for three days. The three-day visit covered a number of important Scientific, Educational institutions and meetings with high-level Ministry officials in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
In St Petersburg Secretary first visited the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, one of the prominent institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences to explore new cooperation opportunities between the two countries in the area of Clean Energy. Thereafter Secretary visited to Saint Petersburg State University regarding establishing joint cooperation in Big Data and Cyber Physical Systems.
The visit to Moscow started with signing of a new MoU with the Fund for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE) on the initiative “Indo-Russia Unified Technology Assessment and Accelerated Commercialization Program”, which aims at facilitating the joint efforts to support enterprises to improve their international competitiveness through international co-operation, innovative activities and technology transfer in jointly defined thematic areas. Within the framework of the visit of the Secretary one more meeting was held with the officials of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation to discuss cooperation on joint augmentation of Innovation eco-system through young generation of India and Russia.
Secretary met with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to sign the protocol with results of the second Indo-Russian call for research in the field of science, technology and innovation. The call has successfully resulted in approval of five big-scale joint research projects that will promote STI cooperation to new heights. He further met the head of the Russian Science Foundation to launch a second call for projects thus marking successful implementation of the first call which has resulted in 17 joint basic and exploratory research projects. One more meeting with Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FASO) was focused on implementing the MoU in the field of science, technology and innovation that was signed in 2016. The MoU is expected to enhance closer interaction between the Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientists of India.
The three-day visit concluded by attending the Jubilee Conference “Advancing the Future of Scientific Partnership”. This event, organized jointly by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the Embassy of India in Moscow, celebrated the 10th year Anniversary of successful collaboration between the RFBR and the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. A decade-old cooperation has resulted in 271 joint projects in basic and interdisciplinary research. This year will see 53 more joint research projects approved, which is the highest number of approved projects throughout the whole period.
India-Russia Scientific Cooperation is very old and deep-rooted and has connected the two countries very strongly. The above visit of Secretary, DST is evidence that Russia holds a special place among the scientists of India.
Moscow
June 21, 2017
