RIKEN delegation visits leading Indian research institutes
08 June 2012 (Volume 7 Issue 5)
RIKEN personnel engaged in talks with officials from the University of Hyderabad
As part of RIKEN’s ongoing program of extending its network of research links with top-level international institutions across the globe, a management delegation from RIKEN visited India between 26 February and 2 March on a five-day tour of top Indian institutes located in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The RIKEN personnel were accompanied by representatives from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Japanese Embassy in India. During the visit, which built on previous missions to the subcontinent such as that led by RIKEN President Ryoji Noyori in 2006, the combined delegation met senior academic staff and high-ranking officials from such leading national institutions as the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the University of Hyderabad, the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, and participated in guided tours of their respective research facilities.
In addition, the group from Japan held talks with senior officials from the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science, where they discussed the possibility of reactivating a 2006 Memorandum of Understanding between RIKEN and the Indian government as a basis for future research collaborations, and as a prelude to 60th anniversary celebrations to be held this year which mark the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Japan and independent India. In total, the delegation visited ten universities, institutes and government organizations as well as the India office of the University of Tokyo located in Bangalore.
The Japanese delegation was warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by their Indian counterparts and held fruitful discussions about a range of potential opportunities for further strengthening academic ties, including the possibility of holding joint seminars, creating collaborative research programs with RIKEN and setting up a joint research center between the NCBS and the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology.
