India Developing Ambitious R&D Ecosystem In High Tech Sectors

You may have heard of India’s Quantum Mission but what about the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF)? Also, the Hydrogen Valley Innovation Cluster? These are some of the deep tech areas that are the subject of the government’s focus, the idea being to develop expertise, knowledge and skills for the future, a future that may not be as far off as it may appear.

Talking about these issues on The Gist was Dr Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology. Dr Karandikar says the ANRF, set up by an Act of Parliament last year, will help create a robust R&D innovation ecosystem in the country.

“The foundation will fund R&D programs. It will also foster industry academy collaborations, and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship,” he said.

The foundation has an R&D fund and another called Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund. It will provide funding for R&D programs in different areas across academic institutions and universities. It will not be limited to Tier 1 academic institutions but cover Tier II and III.

“We have to create an R&D ecosystem across the length and breadth of the country and that really requires us to expand the research and innovation ecosystem, culture, even in the Tier two, Tier three institutions,” said Dr Karandikar.

Ten percent of the fund will be used for innovation and entrepreneurship. So that will promote translational research, commercialization of the research done in academia and R&D labs, and promoting entrepreneurship.

The foundation is chaired by the prime minister. It will not only receive grants from the government through the Department of Science and Technology, but it is also expected to raise resources from industry, CSR funds, philanthropies, other line ministries, etc.

“The whole objective is to really streamline the R&D activities in the area which are critical to our country and create a very robust ecosystem,” Karandikar explained.

These range from clean energy to semiconductors or AI. Although the last falls within the domain of the Ministry of Electronics & IT, such activities will be streamlined through the ANRF.

“We are looking for technology areas where we can leverage our expertise on a near-term basis and also, you know, technologies which are more futuristic. This is going to be kind of an umbrella organisation,” he said. “We expect to coordinate with other government agencies and leading ministries.”

The Quantum arena is also in focus. Quantum technology is based on the principles of quantum mechanics and while the principles have been known for almost 50 years, it is now possible to realize some of those principles into a real system.

“And we expect that such a system built on quantum mechanical principles, will be much more powerful than the traditional computing systems and from a communication point of view, these will be much more secure,” Karandikar said.

In his view, India was at par with many nations in understanding and applying Quantum. “I would say that we are not generations behind. I mean, they (US, China) have taken the lead and this may be, in that sense, the right time for us to take that plunge into the area of quantum technologies … we can do some disruptive innovations.”

“We do have some skills in our Tier one academic institutions like some Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and some start-ups have also come up, which are working on some very, very interesting stuff. So, we have an initial sort of capacity for this.”

He agreed that more capacity is required so with that in view, four mission hubs, one in the area of computing, another in communication, one in sensing and the fourth in the area of quantum materials and devices, are coming up and each will work in a consortium mode, as a consortium of research groups and institutions and start-ups. These hubs are expected to come up in about six months. The Chinese, from various reports, are ahead in Quantum, so is Germany but there is always scope for disruptive innovations given India’s strength in developing algorithms and applications on computing.

The Department of Science & Technology has a program on clean energy that includes hydrogen. The plan is to set up Hydrogen Valley innovation clusters to demonstrate the entire value chain from hydrogen production to usage. And this is coming up on a pilot scale.

The Cyber-Physical System program involves R&D programs in 25 mission hubs in the country. These cover cyber security, sensors and precision agriculture, even autonomous vehicles, medical robotics. The objective is to not only advance research but also incubate and mentor start-ups.

In the last three or four years, some hubs are doing remarkably well. The hub at IIT Kanpur, which is involved in cyber security, has developed some pathbreaking technologies and nurtured more than two dozen start-ups. The hub at IIT Hyderabad has been working in the area of autonomous vehicles and developed some very interesting technologies. There is another hub in Bangalore working on communications technology and 5G.

“We want to be a leader in AI,” said Karandikar, “We want to be a leader in semiconductors. We have to do this large-scale capacity building and that requires a creative, robust R&D culture, not just in a few IITs but we have to expand that to other institutions and make an effort to generate quality human resources and talent in all these institutions.”

Karandikar said he was “quite confident” about being able to make some real breakthroughs either in the area of Quantum or in the area of Cyber-Physical Systems in the next four or five years that will be deployable and usable.

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