Technology forum may get legal entity status

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Hyderabad: The Global Innovation and Technology Alliance (GITA), jointly promoted by the department of science and technology (DST) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), to foster international technology programmes, is in the process of obtaining a legal entity status.

This was announced by Anjan Das, CII senior director and head (technology, innovation, IPR and lifesciences) during the sidelines of an Indo-US conference on ‘Bio processes and bio products — Technology trends and opportunities’ oganised by the CII and Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) with the support of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) in Hyderabad.

The basic objective of Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSTF) is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the country.

Though DST had bilateral and S&T agreements with over 73 countries, it was felt that there is a need for a dedicated autonomous outfit manned by professionals for making the initiatives more participative and goal-oriented for benefiting both the industry and institutions of the nation was identified.

Incidentally, DST has signed an MoU with CII for establishing GITA in 2007 to strategise, promote, executive and follow-up various programmes under the S&T cooperation programme.

Das said that GITA had called for proposals under the Indo-Canada and Indo-Israel S&T cooperation programmes and had identified eight and six projects respectively in the areas of lifesciences, nano technology and ICT with a lead time of two to three years.

“A joint fund with a $1-million contribution each from India and Israel has already been formed under the India-Israel Initiative for Industrial R&D programme. The companies are in the process of signing agreements and will take a couple of months for the projects to take off. About 50% of the project cost will be funded through the joint corpus. As regard to the Indo-Canada programme, each of the projects requires a funding of about Rs 2.41 crore,” he added.

IUSTF aims to identify some 15 innovative business plans per annum, offer them proper mentoring and handholding them by University of Texas at Austin, till their ideas are translated into real world products. The programme, to be announced shortly will have funding about $600,000 for two years.

Meanwhile, another interesting development is that climatologists in India will be having real time data on cyclones by 2011, when the county will get its first aircraft that can fly right into the eye of a storm.

“We have facilitated a meeting with weather researchers of India and the US in 2007 and a science plan had already been drafted,” Arabindo Mitra, executive director of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), which was established under an agreement between India and the US governments in March 2000 said.

The project proposal in a collaboration of India’s National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and US-based National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).