NITI Aayog's AIM join hands with Australia's science agency CSIRO

NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission and Australia's national science agency Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have joined hands to encourage cooperation on innovations in areas of national challenges and shared priorities, an official statement said on Saturday.

The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and CSIRO have signed a letter of intent to drive innovation activities in areas of national challenges and shared priorities of both countries, the statement said.

The move came after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his visit to India met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on 10th March.

The meeting between the two prime ministers spanned across areas of mutual interest and explored avenues of strengthening bilateral engagement in a range of key areas with innovation as one key item, it added.

The statement said the letter of intent between AIM and CSIRO calls for a greater collaboration in areas of mutual interest and strategic priorities and serves as a general framework for cooperation intended to facilitate the development of more programme-specific interventions.

One of the programmes, India Australia Innovation and Technology Challenge (IA-ITC), intends to leverage the complementary capabilities and resources of the innovation ecosystem of both the countries, it added.

The IA-ITC builds on the success of the India Australia Circular Economy (IACE) hackathon 2021, which witnessed university students, startups, and SMEs from both India and Australia develop innovative tech-based solutions for circularity in food system value chain.

Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director - AIM, NITI Aayog, said this partnership and the IA-ITC programme in particular is an exciting opportunity for India and Australia to collaborate at different levels of the ecosystem involving startups, SMEs, business incubators and accelerators, VCs and the industry.

This will open new horizons in knowledge sharing and co-creation given CSIRO's vast experience with science and technology programmes, he added.