New Delhi, May 20 (IANS). The National Research Foundation (ANRF), India’s apex research funding body, has selected 10 Convergence Research Centers of Excellence (CoE) with the aim of deepening scientific knowledge with social sciences and humanities. This information was given by the Ministry of Science and Technology in an official statement on Wednesday.
The ministry said in the statement that the objective of this initiative is to establish leading centers that bring together social sciences, humanities, science and technology to address complex social challenges through integrated and multidisciplinary research.
The selected institutes include IIT Gandhinagar, NIAS Bengaluru, IIT Madras, NIT Agartala, IHD Delhi, IIT Dharwad, IIM Jammu, IIT Kanpur, Chanakya University and PSGR Krishnammal College for Women.
These centers will work on various subjects like archaeology, traditional knowledge systems, digital humanities, rural development, health and computational economics.
The program requires that each center has interdisciplinary collaboration within the same institution or between different academic institutions, publicly funded organizations, various ministries, and private institutions.
The Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs) associated with these Centers represent a network of diverse institutions. Altogether they are associated with 20 partner institutions, which include state universities, central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), private universities, colleges and recognized research and development institutes.
The program received an overwhelming response from academic and research institutions, with a total of 945 proposals submitted, reflecting its national importance and relevance.
By combining scientific knowledge and social understanding, the program will strive to find holistic solutions to regional and national challenges. In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and big data analytics, such coordination can open new avenues of socio-economic progress and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
ANRF’s Convergence Research Center of Excellence program is inspired by the National Education Policy 2020 and designed in line with the vision of ‘Develop India 2047’.
–IANS
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