The meeting brought together leaders from government, academic institutions, and industry bodies to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of the current state-of-play, plausible partnership models, local contextualisation, and effective implementation modalities

The 26th Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) meeting chaired by Professor Ajay Kumar Sood at Vigyan Bhawan Annexe in New Delhi discussed how to accelerate Industry-Academia partnership for research and innovation.

Along with the PM-STIAC members, the meeting brought together leaders from government, academic institutions, and industry bodies to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of the current state-of-play, plausible partnership models, local contextualisation, and effective implementation modalities.

The meeting was joined by Dr. V. K. Saraswat, Member S&T, NITI Aayog; Dr. Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India; Dr. Rajesh S. Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology; Leena Nandan, Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change; Dr. S. Somnath, Secretary, Department of Space; Dr. Rajiv Bahl, Secretary, Department of Health Research, and Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research; Dr. N. Kalaiselvi, Secretary, Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, and Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research; Dr. Samir V. Kamat, Secretary, Department of Defence R&D and Chairman, DRDO; Dr. Ajit Kumar Mohanty, Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy; S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology; Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology; and Dr. Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe.

Leaders from academic institutions included Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc Bengaluru; Prof. Shireesh Kedare, Director, IIT Bombay; Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Group Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani Campuses; and Prof. Rajat Moona, Director, IIT Gandhinagar.

Industry bodies including NASSCOM (Debjani Ghosh, President, and Rajesh Nambiar, President-designate); Biocon (Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson and Founder); Invest India (Nivruti Rai, CEO & MD); FICCI (Anandi Iyer, Co Chair, FICCI Innovation Committee); Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology Ashish Dhawan, Founder); and Centre for Technology, Innovation and Economic Research (Janak Nabar, CEO) shared their insights on the topic.

Dr. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, former Director General, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research and Dr. Naushad Forbes, former Chairman, CII, sent their insights which were circulated and duly discussed.

In his opening address, Prof. Sood highlighted the need for strengthening industry-academia partnerships for advancing research and innovation (R&I) in general, and through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), in particular. For this goal, he emphasized that the stakeholders - industry, academia and government – have to play a complementary role to get increased socio-economic benefits from the efforts made in the country for R&I activities.

Dr. V. K. Saraswat, Member S&T, NITI Aayog, called for identifying priority areas where industry and academia can collaborate to accelerate research and innovation in the country. He advocated for prioritizing design and advancing academic research to make India a product-driven nation. He stressed on building expertise in frontier technologies, fostering collaboration between academia and industry, building trust in indigenous R&D and increasing exposure in academia to the industry as vital steps to enhance the R&D ecosystem in the country.

In his concluding remarks, Prof. Sood emphasized the importance of aligning incentives across stakeholders to bring R&D capabilities to the forefront. He echoed the recommendations made by earlier speakers on the need to bridge the gap between existing resources and future demands, ensuring that research and innovation address the critical needs of the nation.

Agencies