A collaborative mechanism by the public organizations to increase trust between the industry and academia and further the economic and moral values of the SMEs and Academic sector is just one of the suggestions by the DST-Centre for Policy Research at Panjab University, Chandigarh, keen on improving the patent commercialisation ecosystem in India.

The Centre, which is playing a critical role in recommending interventions for making National level S&T policies more robust, has also insisted on promotion of innovations, encouraging funding mechanism, policy interventions at the state & central level, university-industry linkages, public and private spending on R&D, to enhance translational research ecosystem in India.

The Centre at Punjab University is one of the centres set up by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the program called Science, Research and Innovation System for High Technology led path for India (SRISHTI).  

It was set up to give an impetus to develop strong Industry-Academia (I-A) interactions, and promote the Intellectual Property (IP) ecosystem in India.  The Centre conducts research on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and IP policies and is working on the development of a new country-specific model for promoting Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) for R&D, identifying areas of policy gaps for stimulation of private sector investment in R&D and suggest changes in the policy environment and adopting evidence-based approaches for identifying and promoting areas for the generation of intellectual properties.

Towards these ends, the Centre has conducted evidence-based studies, and the recommendations drawn out from the studies and brainstorming would become part of the new Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Policy Draft.

The centres has also set up several National, International, regional, interdepartmental and inter-organisational collaborations to include international best practices in policy formulations, involve multiple institutions to strengthen policies and to reach the impact of the policies to the regional and local levels.

Representing the Indian STI policy ecosystem on various national and international platforms, the Centre has persisted in its recommendations through diverse platforms, such as conferences, roundtable meets, invited lectures, publication of books, research articles and reports, and is now gradually gaining acceptance by the funding agencies.