Queen Mary academics have been awarded funding to support and develop the College’s links with Indian universities, as part of a strategic intergovernmental initiative to foster closer scientific collaboration between UK and Indian scientists and industrial engineers.
The India-UK Advanced Technology Centre of Excellence aims to stimulate research into next generation networks systems and services, by facilitating, encouraging and enabling industry collaboration with research-active academic institutions and government departments, protecting the Digital Economy of both countries.
The consortium has just been awarded a major grant of £5m jointly from the Indian Government’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This is matched by a further investment of over £4m from the consortium’s academic and industrial partners.
Led by Professor Gerard Parr from the University of Ulster, the consortium includes Dr Eliane Bodanese from Queen Mary’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, as well as researchers at UCL and the universities of Southampton, St Andrews, Surrey and Cambridge.
Non-academic partners include Dr Nader Azarmi from the BT Group, Dr Deependra Moitra, VP Research, InfoSys India and the British High Commission in India.
Professor Parr commented: “On behalf of our entire consortium I am delighted with the encouragement and support I have received from academic partners and the support our team has received from leading Industry and the governments of both countries.”
Of the £2.5m from the EPSRC, around £400k will come to Queen Mary. The funding will support PhD and Research Assistant placements, internships and equipment in 11 different sub-projects.
Professor Ursula Martin, Vice-Principal for Science and Engineering at Queen Mary, commented: “This is flagship project is a wonderful stimulus to our growing relationships with universities in India.”
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