Dr. Yuji Nishikawa on 2-day visit to Chandigarh to promote scientific ties with PU & CRIKC

Chandigarh, July 21, 2016: India Liaison Representative, Japan Science and Technology (JST) Agency, Dr.Yuji Nishikawa, is on a two day visit to Chandigarh to promote scientific ties with the Panjab University (PU) and Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC) institutions.
Dr. Nishikawa shared that Japan has initiated a number of programs to promote student/researcher exchange programs and joint research work in the field related to ICT (Internet Communication Technology), energy/environment issues, disaster risk reduction, infectious disease control and food security, with the Government of India especially, Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
There are programs in India called Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) to address issues of global and local concern. In this program JST has completed three projects involving ‘restoration of holy rivers by Japanese Environmental Technology’, ‘opening doors to low carbon society’ and ‘trump card for disaster planning’. Recently a project has been initiated for smart cities based on sensing, network and big data analysis of multimodal regional transport system.JST is planning to start a collaboration hub for international research program on Information communication technology (ICT) to work on the area of artificial intelligence, big data, etc.
He also shared that JST has a program named as Sakura Science Plan (SSP) which aims to encourage visit of young talented, hardworking and S & T aspiring youths from India (upto the age of 40) after high school onwards. This year the JST would support visit of over 500 young talented students/researchers to schools, universities and research institutes for a period upto three weeks.
He shared that number of Indian students studying in Japan currently is dismal compared to China, Nepal, Bangladesh, etc. The number of Indian students in Japan is only 700, compared to 90,000 for China and 10,000 from Nepal. He suggested that Japanese Govt has now more initiatives to attract Indians from academia and industry. JST at present is funding projects over 1 billion US dollars to promote research and exchange programs.
PU Vice Chancellor Prof. Arun K Grover, Dean of University Instruction (DUI), Prof. Dinesh K Gupta, Director Research Prof. O.P. Katare, Coordinator CRIKC Prof. S.K. Mehta, Prof. Rupinder Tiwari, Prof. Praveen Rishi, Prof. Rajat Sandhir, Prof. Meenakshi Goyal along with many faculty members were present during the interaction with the JST representative. Prof. Grover suggested that the possibility of Joint meeting of be planned between scientists from Japan with faculty/scientists part of the CRIKC institutions be explored so that the two way channel opens between the two countries.