Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Colloborative research across continents

Yesterday, I attended a half-day EU Info seminar and could not post in the blog. I was invited by Dr. Andrew Sors who was the Minister-Counsellor,Head, Science and Technological Development in the Delegation of the European Commissionto India, Bhutan, Nepal.The Delegation is organising a series of Information Seminars concerning opportunities for Indian participation in EU research actions. The Seminar Series will be held in 8 cities which are important S&T hubs in India, during the period 7 – 18 July.

Each Seminar will be half a day in duration. The Seminar programme, registration details and further information are available at http://www.delind.ec.europa.eu/en/stcoop/fp7roadshow.htm

Well , European Commision is looking for stronger participation of India, in EU research activities which has thematic areas starting from ICT to Nanotechnologies , robotics,life sciences to Renewable energy . Interested research scientist and entreprenuers who are looking for further information can use the EC's portal in this space - http://cordis.europa.eu . It has all the information regarding the Research and Technology Development (RTD) and the related grants of Framework Program (FP7) . They says as it has all the details, and that's why ,it is hard to understand . So the need of this seminars.

EU Colloborative Research brings a lot of team across two different continents which is a rare experience in terms of meeting and networking with people of different culture and values , apart of the sheer joy of creating something new. EU has fairly transperent process. However , the problem is, it takes time to know about the entire set of parametres ,which comes into working ,while creating a EU proposal and getting a EU grant . I had an experience last year on participating in the process of creating a Grant proposal for EU where 7 organisations around the world participated . There where two from India, One from Israel, one from UK ,one from Sweden , One from France ( who later didn't participate) , and two from Italy . Quite a large number of people and enormous communication excercise with deep learning experience .

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Joydip that was an interesting article. Would like to know more about the colloborative research platform. Will they participate in development of statistical risk models for business continuity? How do I proceed? I was checking out the site you have mentioned but was unclear about the process. Thanks. Vivek Parti. http://www.indiabusinessdatabase.com

Joydip Chakladar said...

Vivek ,Colloborative research is more concentrated on thematic areas which is scientific in nature . The thematic areas which are more like ths ICT,Nanotechnology,Energy which closely resembles to scientific and technology research . The Business research though might be there is the thematic are of Science and Society . In my earlier experience while working with EU , I find much of the Business research is done on the dissemination portion of research work where the research is put into use for the common good society . But that's just a part of it . I have not found out a complete research program mentioned in any call for proposal on the areas you mentioned.

Yes, you are right the EC site is very complicated and they often use buzzwords which make less sense to the common user . It is for that reason , Info seminars are good option to join , incase it is happening nereby your city.

If you are looking for specific person to communicate you can go for the National Contact points.