CHENNAI: Research scholars of IIT across the country have a reason to smile. Thanks to an initiative by the IIT Alumni Centre (IITAC), cross-border collaborations and funding of research now has a direct bridge.
Launched in Chennai on Tuesday, the platform called ‘Touchstone’ is under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development. With a focus on speeding up research alliances, volunteers mobilised by IITAC will play catalyst to connect researchers with like-minded scholars abroad as well as aid funding for such projects.
To make this happen, Ravi Santhanam, co-ordinator of Touchstone said, “Our greatest resource is the three lakh-odd alumni we have across industries and academia. We hope that they will form a ‘virtual neural network’ that can be tapped into for the benefit of the academia in our country.”
Apart from IIT scholars, this initiative also extends to BITs, IITs and IISERS, a total of 79 institutions in all. The platform will run across 20 research verticals such as aeronautics, ocean engineering and nano technology.
As for the nature of these cross-border collaborations, this could include joint research projects, exchange of research fellows or visiting faculty, to name a few.
It is also planned that business leaders of respective domains or ‘volunteer champions’ chosen by IITAC will support the initiative by contributing four to six hours a week. A short video of HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar appreciating the project was played as part of the event.