Monday, February 28th 2011: Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is this week intensifying its international collaborations by co-hosting a series of symposia in Bangalore, India, with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS).

The symposia, covering specialised areas such as information security, neuroscience and plant biology, will feature formal presentations by SFI-funded researchers based at Cork Institute of Technology, Dublin City University, Waterford Institute of Technology, University College Dublin, University of Limerick, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork and NUI Galway. In addition to the symposia, IDA Ireland is facilitating meetings between companies based in India and the visiting Irish researchers to encourage further collaboration.

Commenting on the significance of such high-level engagement with India’s scientific community, Dr Ruth Freeman, SFI’s Director of Enterprise and International Affairs, said, “In co-hosting this series of conferences in India, SFI is strengthening Irish-Indian research collaborations and facilitating exchange of research personnel and expertise between our two countries. The occasion will also greatly assist in raising the profile of Irish research in India.”

Ireland established formal research links with India in 2006, following an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation between the Irish and Indian Governments that year. Since then, Ireland-India research collaborations have increased and diversified, particularly through the Programme of Co-operation on Science and Technology  2009-2011, which has facilitated research from ICT and sustainable energy, to medical sciences and food science.

SFI-funded researchers are currently collaborating with 11 universities across India, in areas such as physics, materials, chemistry, biological sciences and computer science, while SFI currently funds five Indian lead researchers based in Ireland.