Hyderabad: Industry-academia links key to knowledge eco

Begumpet: Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Friday organised 'Telangana Tech Summit,' a virtual conference with the theme of 'Enriching Industry - Institutional Collaboration on Research & Technology.' The conference discussed challenges and opportunities in bringing industry and academia together and also deliberated on the technologies developed by the some of the premier research institutions of the country.

In his inaugural address, Sunil Kumar, Joint Secretary, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, mentioned that India ranks really high in publishings and stands at number 8th in patents filings this year. He said that Telangana has a huge potential for academic and industry collaborations as it is the state which sends the largest number of students to IITs. He also said that it is important to encourage the entrepreneurs to have more investments in their R&D and engage with the institutions.

Joel Reifman, Consul General, the US Consulate, emphasised on the Indo-US collaborations, especially with Telangana. He mentioned about the potential partnerships between India and US in defence and aerospace, biotech and pharma and environment technology sectors. He also said that around 200 thousand students have studied in U.S.A this year.

Krishna Bodanapu, the chairman of CII Telangana and MD of CYIENT Ltd., said that industry and academia collaborations are very important in global innovation rankings and creation of innovative solutions for the social benefit. He pointed out that in the recent years, a positive shift is seen in new partnerships between both. He called for a strong policy on incentivising which benefits both industry and academia should come in.

Dr AjitRangnekar, Director General, Research & Innovation Circle of Hyderabad (RICH), mentioned that there is a significant change in industry and academia approach in recent years and this is the right time to take industry and academia collaborations to the next level. He said there was a need to scale up the institutional researches is very important while preparing talent for the Industry ready which will solve the multi-disciplinary problems.

He also mentioned that we have to be in fore front of solving tomorrow's problems and emphasised on creating working groups and organising round tables between Industry and Academia to strengthen the collaborations and creating an eco-system.. Dr S Chandrashekhar, Director, CSIR-CCMB, mentioned there is a need to find common areas of collaboration between academy and industry. Towards bringing both on one platform and make new synergies, he requested CII to come up with a white paper on their expectations from the academia. AVS Reddy, Convener, CII Telangana MSME Panel and MD of Appidi Technologies Pvt Ltd, delivered the concluding remarks. Over 100 participants from industry and academia sectors attended the conference.