December 3, 2020.
TED NewsDesk, Patiala: In the first of its kind, IIT Ropar will be collaborating with the IIT Alumni Council to form a Global Centre of Excellence which will work for the development of ‘Agritech and Water’ with contributions from sectors such as artificial imaging, computer vision, chemical engineering and IOT sensors among others.
The overarching aim of the India Innovation Network also extends to the GCE which will become part of the group of fifty institutions across India. They will be involved with research work and providing better research teams with ties to global institutions and organisations. It will help make India appear better on the international stage, especially making the IITs and the i2Net institutions more valuable.
The stakeholders are also expecting to receive a higher percentage of funding for research in the Rs 500,00 crore share for research and funded PhD programmes.
Talking about the collaboration, the Director of IIT Ropar, Prof. Sarit K Das, commented, “The entry of India into the global research marketplace is long overdue. IITs, with their rich legacy and global branding, are rightly placed to address this opportunity. Punjab is the best known for Agriculture and natural irrigation. If agriculture excellence were to be given a GI, then it would go to Punjab. We are looking forward to leading globally in research for Agritech and Water.”
He further added, “By optimally exploiting the new paradigms emerging from the deployment of artificial intelligence, remote sensing and genomics, we are uniquely positioned to blend tradition with technology in a very different way than has been attempted thus far by traditional agricultural institutions.”
Source: Times of India