CSIR labs for more collaboration, to act as force multipliers

Directors of two Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)labs on Saturday said institutions under India's premier national R&D organisation are committed to work together instead of remaining in "academic silos".

"The way that we have worked in the past is that each laboratory is led by a director and each laboratory kept its individuality but if you look at the past, where we have had major successes is when two or three labs worked together... this way the 38 CSIR labs are force multipliers," CSIR's Central Glass And Ceramic Research Institute (CGCRI) Director K Muraleedharan said here.

He compared the spruced up working style to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

"If you look at ISRO, ISRO units work together. Chandrayan is the project of the whole organisation, not one lab," Muraleedharan said during the inauguration of the CSIR Platinum Jubilee Mega Science Exhibition at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology's TRUE campus in Salt Lake City.

As an example, Muraleedharan cited a lithium ion battery manufacturing project in Chennai which is a collaboration of several CSIR labs, including CGCRI.

"My lab has contributed towards the ceramic separator component of the battery. We realise that if we work together, we can achieve much more than what each person can do. The manufacturing is at a prototype level and the final product cost will be cheaper by half of the price of the imported product," he said.

According to CSIR-IICB Director Samit Chattopadhyay, the focus is on working with industry on a "war footing."

"We are trying to find ways how our chemists and biologists can work on a war footing with industry to come up with 10 products in the next two to three years," he said.

Chattopadhyay said each lab has zeroed-in on 10 problems to be taken up over the next two years and will work on them under "mission mode programme" to deliver products in short timelines.

--IANS

sgh/vd