PIB Delhi – India and Germany have agreed to work together with focus on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) StartUps as well as AI research and its application in Sustainability and Health care, said Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences after his “bilateral” talks with German Minister for Education & Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger. Both the Ministers agreed that there is a lot of scope to work together in Artificial Intelligence for which experts on two sides have already met. An Indo-German call for proposals for this would be raised soon inviting proposals from researchers and industry.
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that in November 2019, during Chancellor Merkel’s visit to Delhi, Germany and India had agreed to establish a joint research programme in Artificial Intelligence. They also decided on the extension of the Indo-German Partnership in Higher Education for another four years, with contributions of 3.5 Million Euros each. Both India and Germany have expressed satisfaction on the ongoing Science & Technology Cooperation between the two countries which is one of the strategic pillars of our bilateral relationship. Academia, Research Institutions and Industries of both countries have strong bonding and are playing the role of catalyst in our strategic research and development partnerships.
On the third day of his official engagement in Berlin, Dr Jitendra Singh mentioned that both the countries are now working in frontier areas of science & technology, including Electric Mobility, Cyber Physical System, Quantum Technologies, Future Manufacturing, Green Hydrogen Fuel, Deep Ocean research and proposed to develop joint cooperation in these areas. Two countries have already started mapping each other’s strength in areas like application of Artificial Intelligence in Sustainability and Healthcare. Both the Ministers expressed satisfaction on recently concluded MOU between Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India and German Research Foundation (DFG) to support the International Research Training Groups (IRTG) program would further boost the cooperation towards capacity building targeting the training of Indian and German students for pursuing the PhD program. The maiden call for inviting proposals under this program from Indian and German research groups is already on.