India and Canada set to launch a bilateral center for S&T activities
In a meeting with a Canadian delegation, Union Minister of State Dr. Jitendra Singh announced that an India-Canada bilateral center will be launched for dedicated Science and Technology activities. The Canadian delegation was led by Mary Ng, the Canadian Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development.
It was identified in the meeting that there will be collaboration in the areas like Advanced Engineering, Manufacturing, Food Technologies, Agriculture, Energy Conservation, Digital Transformation, Healthcare and Energy Conservation.
Dr Jitendra Singh said renewal of two MoUs between India and Canada is due. It is proposed to be signed in upcoming Joint Committee Meeting. The first MoU will be a project based scientific exchange programme. The collaboration will be aimed at helping the society with Science and Technology.
The second such agreement will be with National Research Council (NRC) Canada. This will be an Industrial R&D project that will be for scientific collaboration. Industries from both the countries will jointly develop prototype. They will also commercialize it together.
Dr Jitendra Singh said more youth exchange programmes between Canada and India. He said National Centre for Polar & Ocean Research (NCPOR) is interested to get involved with Canada for in-house research activities encompassing freshwater, coastal marine environments and arctic terrestrial.
He said NCPOR could also initiate various projects in the areas of atmospheric science that will be focused on black carbon, aerosols, air quality and genomics. It also aims to assemble a DNA reference library of arctic life forms that comprises plants, fungi and animals so that the foundation for environmental monitoring will be provided. He informed, twenty projects of academic research and development have been supported by both the sides.
