New Delhi, Mar 11 (IANS): After establishing a few bilateral centres with countries such as the US, Germany, France etc, now a new India-Canada Bilateral Centre will be set up for dedicated S&T activities, it was announced on Friday.
A delegation led by Canadian Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development Mary Ng called on and reviewed the progress of the bilateral cooperation in several key areas with Indian Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh, a release from the Ministry of Science & Technology said.
Both sides identified the proposed areas of collaboration in areas such as green technologies, advanced engineering and manufacturing, agriculture and food technologies, digital transformation, energy conservation and healthcare.
Singh said the renewal of two MoUs between India and Canada is due and is proposed to be signed in the upcoming joint committee meeting in May 2022. The first MoU relates to National Science Engineering Research Centre (NSERC), Canada, which is a project based scientific exchange programme along with the development of human resource in basic and applied sciences.
The second agreement relates to the National Research Council (NRC), Canada, which is an industrial R&D project based on scientific collaboration in which industries from both sides jointly develop prototypes and commercialise them.
The Department of Science & Technology (DST) has been also supporting Industrial R&D projects with Canada, which have potential for application. Total 10 projects have been supported for Industrial R&D till date. From DBT, three joint Calls for Proposals in the areas of 'Water for Health', 'Portable Diagnostics & Analysers', and 'Creating Wealth from Waste' have been launched in collaboration with the India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnership to Accelerate Community Transformation and Sustainability (IC-IMPACTS).
The Canadian Minister expressed desire to deepen cooperation in areas such as bio-technology, renewal energy, and climate change through applied research mode, the release added.