PA/43/12 19 November 2012
Top Australian and Indian scientists awarded fellowships
A new Australia-India Fellowship Fund will support more than eighty leading scientists from Australia and India to spend time at a research institution in the other country.
“Science is an increasingly globalised endeavour. Many of the challenges we will face over the coming decades – providing our growing populations with food, water and energy in a sustainable manner and addressing the burden of chronic disease – are too big for any one country to solve by itself” said Mr Peter Varghese, Australian High Commissioner to India.
“There is great potential for Australia and India to strengthen ties in science and research and address these common challenges together. The fellowship program is an important component of the knowledge partnership our two countries are building”.
Projects areas include such vital topics as climate change impacts on dengue fever transmission, treatment and prevention of obesity and diabetes, drought tolerance in chickpeas and preventing degradation in solar cells.
The new fellowship program, supported by the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, a major joint government initiative, will build stronger ties between the two research communities. Around 11 crore rupees has been committed to the fellowship program in its first year.
The fellowship program offers opportunities for promising researchers at the beginning of their careers. Sixteen young scientists from Australia and 21 from India have received Early Career Fellowships, which support stays in the other country for between 3 and 12 months, where they will learn new skills and techniques and build new research networks. In addition, 11 senior Indian researchers and 33 Australians will receive Senior Visiting Fellowships, which support shorter visits of up to two weeks to strengthen existing collaboration and develop new links.
Indian researchers travelling to Australia will be hosted by some of Australia’s top universities and research institutes, including the Australian National University, CSIRO, Deakin University, Monash University, the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia. Australians visiting India will be based at leading institutions including Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Indian Institute of Science, IIT Delhi and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
The fellowship program is coordinated by the Indian National Science Academy and the Australian Academy of Science with support from grants from the Australian and Indian governments through the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, Australia’s largest fund dedicated to bilateral research with any country and one of India’s largest sources of support for international collaboration. Since its inception, the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund has brought together more than 90 top universities and research institutions on both sides and many hundreds of researchers.
For further information on the AISRF fund, please visit www.innovation.gov.au/aisrf.