Measures to strengthen academia-industries collaboration

In a bid to strengthen industries -academia collaboration in the country, government today announced a series of measures including the setting up of an incubation fund for 100 institutions and an Academia-Industry Interface Council.
Making the announcement after two days of workshop all in industries-academia collaborations for greater national productivity here, HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju said the fund would provide seed money for incubating ideas of students and facility.
"The Ministry will set up an Academia-Industry Interface Council with representatives of Industry and Academia. The Council will promote collaboration between the two and create and innovating culture," he said.

The Ministry will also lunch the National Employability Enhancement Mission (NEEM) through AICTE. "The framework will provide a vehicle for companies and entrepreneurs to provide employability skills and internship as value added proposition to student for all fields."
Raju said the HRD Ministry would indentify 10 institutes with potential to have research parks at tier 1,2 or 3 level depending on the optimum size of industry presence and current level of academia-industry engagement in the institute.
"As in the case of IIT Madras Research Park, while the initial funding would come from government, the research park would be expected to raise resources from the market and generate its own revenues later on," he said.

The Ministry would also explore the possibility of funding for research on a competitive basis for national priorities where industries-academia collaborates. It has begun documenting case studies as an HRE Ministry-CII collaboration initiative.
Raju said the good work of collaboration between industry and academia would be recognized through annual awards.
"In coordination with the industry, we will put in place a mechanism to invite applications for best outcomes of industry-academia partnerships," he said.