Calls for rapid academia-industry collaboration

Amaravati: Defence Research and Development Organisation Chairman Dr Samir V Kamat asserted that India must urgently build a strong collaborative ecosystem where academia undertakes preliminary development of processes and products, while laboratories, startups, MSMEs and industry partners take innovations forward to deployment within three to five years, instead of waiting through prolonged development cycles. Dr Kamat, who also serves as Secretary, Department of Defence R&D, made these remarks during his visit to SRM University-AP, where he interacted with the university leadership and faculty members to strengthen research participation of emerging educational institutions in national defence technology and research.

During the interaction, faculty members discussed their ongoing research in Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Technologies and Computing, and Green Hydrogen. Dr Kamat highly appreciated the Accelerated Materials Development research using Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME), led by Dean-Research Prof Ranji Thapa, noting its relevance to the development of high-energy materials required for missile systems.

The research on the Development of a Quantum Navigation System (QNS) without GPS and fabrication of quantum sensors led by Dr Jatis Kumar Dash from the Department of Physics was also applauded.

Dr Mahesh Kumar Ravva, Prof GS Vinodkumar, Dr Pardha Saradhi Maram and Dr Sujith Kalluri were present.