IIT Kanpur, DRDO Inaugurate Industry-Academia Centre Of Excellence
The centre will spearhead research in various verticals, including advanced nanomaterials and printing on flexible substates.
Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation, has established a DRDO-Industry-Academia Centre of Excellence on its campus for interdisciplinary research in next-generation defence technologies.
The centre will spearhead research initially in various verticals: printing on flexible substrates to build devices and systems based on thin films, advanced nanomaterials for material selection and design, accelerated material design and development to reduce the number of actual trial experiments while reaching optimal solutions via high throughput experiments, high energy materials to focus on modelling of explosives and performance prediction of metalised explosives, and bio-engineering to develop technologies for applications ranging from sensing hazardous agents to wound healing.
DRDO will fund the projects and establish technical facilities and infrastructure required to enable and boost R&D programmes under these verticals. Sanjay Tandon, director of DIA CoE at IIT Kanpur, will oversee its strategic initiative and collaborative endeavours.
This is in line with the DIA CoEs set up by DRDO in key academic institutions in the country through which it's building an ecosystem to facilitate technology development in the academic environment.
“With the changing times, the need for advancement of technology in defence sector is more than ever to become 'Atmanirbhar (self-reliant) Bharat' in true sense of the word. With the strong R&D expertise and state-of-the-art facilities in flexible electronics, nanomaterials, materials science and engineering, high energy, and bioengineering, IIT Kanpur is well poised to contribute to this collaborative effort,” said Manindra Agrawal, director of IIT Kanpur.
“The centre will pave the path for indigenisation of the various strategic technologies in the long-term, making the defence sector self-reliant and sustainable. This will accelerate the development of new materials for futuristic defence systems,” added Samir V Kamat, secretary, department of defence R&D and chairman, DRDO.
