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News Update |
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Eventhough India and the United States of America are located on the opposite sides of the globe, the academic worlds of these two countries are perhaps the closest among all. Therefore, it is expected that the persons in the academic worlds of these two countries feel the strong need to come closer and form collaborative groups. Of late it has started being felt that the philosophy of making things and fabricating devices is going to experience revolutionary changes. According to most experts it is almost certain that the third Industrial Revolution is almost knocking at the door as our capabilities in the fields of molecular engineering, micro and nano system technology, material science and computer engineering are making very fast progress. Fabrication technology is also being further enhanced as our ability to make things with a 'bottom-up' approach instead of the traditional 'top-down' approach is developing at a rapid rate. Considering these aspects a number of scientists and engineers from various Indian and US universities came together in March 2004 to attend the Joint Indo-US Workshop on "Advanced and Futuristic Manufacturing", held at IIT Kanpur. The event was sponsored by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, New Delhi.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) of the USA suported the travel cost of all the US participants that helped the event to achieve its primary goals in a big way. A number of faculty members developed interest in pursuing collaborative R & D work in the areas.
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This event was followed up by a few faculty members from IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, UIUC, Northwestern University and UCI in the form of joint seminar programmes, workshops and collaborative research activities. IIT Kanpur also appointed Profs S G Kapoor, Marc Madou and Kornel Ehmann as Distinguished Visiting Professors. Finally based on the proposal submitted by IIT Kanpur in collaboration with the other four universities, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, New Delhi sanctioned the Indo-US Joint Centre for Advanced and Futuristic Manufacturing in April 2006.
The role of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi and the NSF has been very supportive; the collaborative faculty members from the USA and India were able to get the financial grant for a number of their research proposals. Though in the future research grants from other sponsoring agendies may be obtained for the proposals by the researchers involved with the Centre this supportive gesture by the DST and NSF has been playing a major role in making this Indo-US Centre a successful ventre. |
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