Tirupati may get SATHI centre soon

Tirupati: The pilgrim city will soon get a Sophisticated Analytical & Technical Help Institute (SATHI) centre. Initiated by the department of science and technology (DST), this shared, professionally managed infrastructure facility will be readily accessible to academia, start-ups, manufacturing units, industries and R&D labs. This is considered as more useful in the city as reputed Institutes like IIT and IISER and several other universities make it as an R&D cluster.

Though the department has set up three centres initially, the idea was to set up five centres every year which will have major analytical instruments and advanced manufacturing facilities. The objective was to avoid redundancy and duplication of expensive equipment in institutions with easy accessibility.

The centre will also organise short term courses, workshops, seminars, hands on training programmes etc. on the use and application of various instruments and techniques for both external, internal users and researchers. The key feature is the facilities will be used for 80 percent of available time by external users which are outside of the host institutes and 20 percent by internal users.

Tirupati MP Dr M Gurumoorthy was very keen in getting this centre to his constituency and wrote to the Minister for Science and Technology Dr Jithendra Singh for its establishment. He stated that Tirupati is having high knowledge potential and young enthusiastic students are key resources to build futuristic India. As such it requires the capital equipment, operating facilities, industry partnerships among other components.

As it was agreed in principle, he met the Minister in New Delhi on Monday again and submitted another letter seeking to speed up the process and was hopeful of getting the centre sanctioned very soon.