New Delhi, Oct 17 (SocialNews.XYZ) Startups and industries will soon have access to equipment and science and technology infrastructure in different institutions, universities and colleges spread all over the country to carry out experiments and tests they require for their research and development, technology and product development.
The Department of Science and Technology is restructuring its FIST (Fund for Improvement of S&T Infrastructure in Universities and Higher Educational institutions) programme under which it supports scaling up of the network of infrastructural facilities for teaching and research in universities and higher educational institutions to cater to high-end science and technology infrastructural requirements of startups and industries.
"The immensely successful FIST programme will now be reinvented to FIST 2.0 to orient it towards the goal of Aatmanirbhar Bharat so as to create R&D infrastructure not only for experimental work, but also to cater to theoretical work, ideas and entrepreneurship. This will create a new paradigm for FIST 2.0," said Sanjay Dhande, the new chairperson of the FIST Advisory Board.
It will also link up programmes like FIST, Sophisticated Analytical Instrument Facilities (SAIF), and Sophisticated Analytical & Technical Help Institutes (SATHI), all of which are designed to set up S&T infrastructure centres at different levels -department, university, regional and national.
At present, while on an average about 8,500 researchers use these facilities spread in centres all over India, industries and startups involved in R&D, technology and product development have to carry out most high-end experiments and testing of technologies from laboratories outside India.
This is because they prefer not to buy equipment and infrastructure which are of limited usage to them, and they cannot access most of the high-end science and technology infrastructure set up in the universities and institutions.
Till 2019, about 2,910 S&T departments and PG colleges have been supported with a total investment of about Rs 2970 crores under FIST. In SAIF, 15 centres have been funded while SATHI has three centres running and more be supported under the R& D infrastructure division.
The science and technology infrastructure network would now reach out to more beneficiaries and focus on alignment with some of the national missions and sustainable development goals as well as towards technology translational research promoting different startups and industries.
The restructuring would also entail a shift from discipline (tool-centric) based research to interdisciplinary problem solution centric research.
This would not only encourage Indian-origin researchers in academic institutes and research organisations across the world and resident counterparts to explore collaborative joint ventures to strengthen the science and technology base in India for global development but would also enrol industry in R&D endeavor to bring about direct benefits for the society.
Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, added, "There is a huge investment in the creation of science and technology infrastructure in the country running into several tens of thousands of crores every year in the country, which will bring manifold value with effective and transparent sharing practices with the ease of use. In view of this, DST is also currently formulating a policy on the best practices for the creation, effective use, sharing, maintenance, skill generation, and disposal of the S&T infrastructure."
Source: IANS
Gopi Adusumilli is a Programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
He enjoys designing websites, developing mobile applications and publishing news articles on current events from various authenticated news sources.
When it comes to writing he likes to write about current world politics and Indian Movies. His future plans include developing SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgment towards any.
He can be reached at gopi@socialnews.xyz
This website uses cookies.
