Soon, 50 centres of excellence in frontier disciplines

Updated on: Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Within the next six years, the Indian government plans to establish as much as 50 centres of excellence in frontier areas of science and technology.

A committee headed by scientist C N R Rao has shortlisted 35 proposals from 30 institutions and 15 more will be added later.

They will be located in campuses of existing institutions, both government and private,and will have complete autonomy. The centres will conduct courses at postgraduate /PhD/post-doctoral levels.

These centres will work in biotechnology, bio-informatics, nano-materials and nano-technologies,mechatronics and high performance computing among others.
They will also run short-term training programmes including summer and winter schools.There will be separate courses to enhance the competence level of teachers and post-graduate students.

Institutions were selected on the basis of number of PhDs and post-graduate students in the last five years, number of publications in the last five years and profile of the leader of the group that submitted the proposal.

Other areas identified include engineering/industrial design,chaos, complexity and self-organising systems, professional/business/technical/engineering ethics, consciousness studies, communication, creativity and innovation.

Soon, 50 centres of excellence in frontier disciplines

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