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When industry and academia collaborate, when the country’s best minds and resources come together, their strengths are synergized, creating an efficient research and development (R&D) ecosystem for solving complex challenges.
This is why the Office of the PSA’s Strategic Alliances Division was created to facilitate R&D collaboration between industry and academia, with the aim to tackle some of India’s most pressing ground-level issues such as hygiene, sanitation, water shortage, waste management, and renewable energy.
The Strategic Alliances Division performs this function for two key areas —‘emerging technologies’ and ‘science, technology, and innovation aligned with sustainable development goals (SDGs)’—through several mechanisms, a major one being the creation of centres of excellence (CoEs) to mobilise support from industry partners for academic research.
The CoEs are hosted at premier institutions in the country, such as the IITs, NITs, IISERs, IISc, CSIR Labs, etc., but are driven by industry partnership. They are tasked with developing, testing, and deploying technologies in real conditions—thereby providing comprehensive technological solutions from ideation to application—in addition to skill and capacity building.
In 2022, the Office of the PSA launched new CoEs at three IITs:
1. Global Sanitation Centre of Excellence at IIT Palakkad
The Global Sanitation Centre of Excellence at IIT Palakkad was established in January 2022 at the Technology Innovation Foundation (TECHIN) of IIT Palakkad, in collaboration with the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO), Toilet Board Coalition, Eram Scientific, and several NGOs working in sanitation and for the underprivileged.
Work at the CoE will involve reducing pollutants and pathogens in water; extracting energy, useful chemicals, and bio-fertilizers from sanitation waste; localizing sewage water treatment technology; improving energy efficiency for these processes; finding safe, clean, and sustainable sanitation solutions; reducing the need for manual scavenging; and creating livelihood opportunities for the women and underprivileged in the sanitation sector.
Dr. Nimish Shah, Managing Director at IAPMO explained an additional role of the CoE: “Our goal is to skill over 10,000 individuals in the next 5 years, scale technologies that contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, harness nutrient and energy resources trapped in the sanitation value chain, and improve the efficiency of energy and water utilisation.”
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2. AquaMAP at IIT Madras
AquaMAP is an interdisciplinary water management and policy centre launched in March 2022 with support from IIT Madras Alumni. The aim at the centre is to tackle the numerous problems underlying chronic water crises in India through smart and sustainable technological and policy solutions. For instance, Shri V. Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, noted that one of the main focus areas of the centre will be agricultural water use efficiency because water consumption in the agricultural sector is the greatest of all.
The faculty at AquaMap will develop and implement these solutions in collaboration with other water and sustainability research centres already present at IIT Madras, such as Sutram and the International Centre for Clean Water.
Over the medium to long term, the plan is pilot scalable solution models on the ground, set up a state-of-the-art hydro-informatics laboratory, and put in place an alumni and community engagement system.
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3. Global Centre of Excellence in Affordable and Clean Energy at IIT Dharwad
While the aforementioned two centres will help India meet UN SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation - the Global Centre, launched in January 2022, will help meet UN SDG 7.
The centre is supported by Honeywell’s corporate social responsibility arm and collaborates with SELCO Foundation for grassroots-level problem identification and implementation.
At the launch, Prof. S.R.M. Prasanna, Dean, Research and Development at IIT Dharwad, elaborated on the scope of work at the centre, which is primarily to develop, optimise, and deploy affordable clean energy technologies from India’s wealth of solar, wind, and biomass resources.
This centre will be a key contributor the nation’s larger goal of meeting 50% of India’s energy needs through renewables by 2030.
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The industry-academia collaborations facilitated by the Strategic Alliances Division have yielded several success stories. With more CoEs already in the pipeline this year, and calls for applications for CoEs from stakeholders in various fields, the number of success stories will surely continue to grow in the years to come.
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