Several collaborative research programmes with French scientists have been successfully completed and some of them have been commercially launched, said T. Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, here on Saturday.
Participating in the silver jubilee of the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research, (IFCPAR) Dr. Ramasami said French scientists had major collaborative research in mathematics, computer science and astronomy. In chemistry and chemical engineering a fair level of research has been done by the scientists of the two countries. Similarly, research projects were successful in the fields of life sciences.
In the last four years, research on water and geospatial issues were focussed through collaborative research, Dr. Ramasami said. In France, the authorities had established an innovation cluster to help in taking up various research projects.
Their primary strength was small and medium enterprises and they had an economy of scope, which helped them to take up research in diversified fields. Similar was the strength of the India, which also has economy of scope.
Both the French and Indian governments had provided equal amount of money for the research projects and constituted Scientific Research Committees to complete the projects. The contribution from the French side was under the ‘reciprocity-parity principle’. In the last several years the partnership with both the countries had matured, Dr Ramasami said, adding that research projects were slowly expanding without compromising on the quality.
T. Amudeswari, Director of IFCPAR, said in the last 25 years the Centre had supported 440 projects of which 337 have been completed. About 1,169 research publications have resulted from the projects, supported in basic science by the Centre. Of the total papers, 27 have received more than 100 citations.Through a study it was found the contribution of IFCPAR to Indo-French collaborative research was about 30 to 35 per cent.
