Secretary Department of Science and Technology (DST) Dr. S Chadrasekhar stressed on aligning the priority areas with the scientific importance of India and Germany at an online webinar conducted as part of the outreach activity to promote recently launched call for proposals for International Research & Training Group between DST and DFG.

The priority areas include Sustainable Energy Technologies (generation, conversion, and storage), Environment and Clean Technologies, Biobased Economy, Bio-based materials for different applications, Food & Agri Technologies, Affordable Healthcare (including Pharmaceuticals and Biomedical Instrumentation), Technologies for Advanced Manufacturing and Integration of AI and Machine Learning in all domains.

Prof. Dr. Katja Becker, President, DFG, German Research Foundation, highlighted that the programme will be a beacon for Indo-German partnerships. It will create strong research collaboration through bottom-up approach to address global challenges.

Shri S.K. Varshney, Head, International Cooperation Division, DST, suggested that this program will not only achieve a larger objective but also train and build capacity among the scientist and researchers in a way that will be instrumental in facing other scientific challenges of the future.

Dr. Katja Fettelschoß, Deputy Head of Division Research Careers, DFG, hoped that this new platform will build a long-term partnership between India and Germany and participation of young researchers to this program should be promoted.

Over 80 participants from Universities and institutions from both countries were present in this online webinar of IRTG and discussed their queries with the officials from the International Division of DST (Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Scientist-E) and DFG (Mr. Martin Roatsch (Research Careers, IRTG Team, DFG) about the details of application process under joint IRTG call.