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 .