German House for Research & Innovation (DWIH) Opens in Delhi

Germany wants to enhance academic and research cooperation with India by creating more synergy with Indian universities, the German Research Foundation (DFG) said at the opening of the German House for Research and Innovation (DWIH) in Delhi on 27th October 2012.


The DWIH has centres in Brazil, Russia, United States and Japan and the New Delhi centre is situated near the German embassy.


"Amongst all the five houses, the New Delhi endeavour has attracted the highest number of German research organisations," DFG president Matthias Kleiner said. "Germany is the most productive collaborative research partner with India in science and technology after the US and nearly 13 percent of all Indian publications in international collaboration have been shared with authors from Germany," he said.


DWIH New Delhi is an initiative of German Federal Foreign Office and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, said a DFG statement. The DWIH will function as a facilitator for bilateral projects in the fields of education, science, research and innovation, informed DWIH coordinator Torsten Fischer. It will act like a channel for the Indian research community, bringing the 14 member institutions and universities under one roof.


According to a DFG analysis, the overall Indo-German scientific collaboration during 2004-2009 has grown at an annual rate of 6.8 percent. "Germany is a hotbed of cutting-edge research with its almost 400 universities. On the other hand, India has some of the finest research talent in the world," said DWIH coordinator Torsten Fischer.


An Indian researcher keen to pursue a project in a particular field needs to contact the DWIH, which will present him/her with a list of the possible universities or institutions to work in as well as the names of the German researchers, he said.The traffic will go both ways, with German researchers also going through DWIH to contact Indian researchers and institutes.


At present, two groups of German scientists are pursuing research in the University of Hyderabad under the auspices of the German Research Foundation (DFG), “which has a corpus of Rs.14,000 crore ($3.1 billion), Fischer said.


“Through the DWIH we aim to bridge the gap between scientists working in India and Germany. We will bring in our expertise on how to apply research to industry,” said the expert, adding that it will help India and Germany create synergies.


The fields of collaborative research could be in “Informatics, Chemistry — theory and applied, Engineering as well as Social Sciences in which there is huge potential”.

Source: IANS