Hyderabad: IICT-RMIT tie-up should lead to multinational cooperation

Hyderabad: A two-day workshop 'Creating Profound Impact through Multidisciplinary Collaborations (CPIMC-2022)' commenced at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) on Monday. It is part of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia, and IICT joint collaboration programme.

Addressing the participants, chief guest Prof. Goverdhan Mehta of UoH, said the association between RMIT and IICT must venture towards multi-institutional and multinational cooperation.

Prof. Calum J Drummond, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, RMIT University, said working with industry is the core idea of RMIT, which is similar to the central theme of CSIR. "Conduct of research is essential but it must benefit beyond and bring about economic utility, he said.

Prof. Suresh K. Bhargava, organising chair, Dean, RMIT University, said the collaboration between the two institutes has been built on trust and mutual benefit. He indicated that efforts will be made to extend this collaboration between Australia, India, Japan, and the US.

Dr D Srinivasa Reddy, Director, CSIR-IICT and programme convener, said "IICT and RMIT have been cherishing well established cooperation in terms of research and academic programs as well as cultural exchange.

"As a part of this programme, we made a big progress with 33 Indian research scholars awarded PhD, more students enrolling for the sandwich programme, 150 research papers published in international journals, 50 articles in various conference proceedings, and a few patents filed too."

He said identifying new research areas and visit of post-doctoral students and faculty between the institutes can be the future step in the international collaboration.

Presenting the overview of the workshop, Dr. S. Sridhar, Chief Scientist of CSIR-IICT, said the programme is the second workshop held at CSIR-IICT, while the first one was held in 2018.