Current Science article "Visions for India: Public Participation, Debate and the S&T community" | by P Sekhsaria and N Thayyil

Visions for India: Public Participation, Debate and the S&T community

by Pankaj Sekhsaria and Naveen Thayyil

Current Science, 2017, 113(10), 1835-1840.

Abstract: This article is an exploration into the nature, width and scope of science and technology visioning exercises in India, particularly in the context of how these narratives are presented and discussed in Current Science, one of India's premier science journals. We categorize these visions into two broad categories – one is a vision that is more individual and/or domain-specific; the other is the institutionalized vision that has a larger mandate and canvas and that creates imaginaries of the future and/or provides horizons for society and S&T to move towards. Prominent examples of the latter are India's Technology Vision 2020 and the most recent, Technology Vision 2035. We observe that visioning exercises in the country have been and continue to be taken up quite prominently, but narratives and debates around them are present only marginally in Current Science. We discuss possible reasons for this and conclude with the hope that more attention will be paid to such exercises and documents on the accounts of investments that are made in them, on the implications these visions have and the importance of imaginaries of the future they create for society, country and for S&T.

Keywords: Technology visions, technology assessment, visioning exercise.

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Current Science article "Indo-French Cooperation in Water Sciences" | by Shilpa and Sujit Bhattacharya

Indo-French Cooperation in Water Sciences: Capturing Research Dynamics through Co-authorship Analysis

by Shilpa and Sujit Bhattacharya

Current Science, 2017, 113(09), 1668-1674.

Abstract: Water scarcity and quality are among the key challenges of the 21st century. Compelling necessity to address this problem has led to the emergence of various types of international collaboration. India is one of the countries seriously affected by water scarcity and quality. International collaboration has emerged as an important component of India's strategy for mitigating the water-related challenges. One of the key linkages in India's international cooperation in water sciences is observed with France. This cooperation has led to the establishment of two joint laboratories: Indo-French Centre for Groundwater Research and Indo-French Cell for Water Sciences. The present study examines the structure of this research cooperation through co-authorship analysis. Analysis over a period of time showed that authors from the two laboratories played a key role in developing the network. The importance of this network is also discussed. 

Keywords: Co-authorship network, international collaboration, research dynamics, social network analysis, water sciences.

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STIP Lecture Series: Technology and Indian Foreign Policy: Tends and Opportunities on Today at IHC

CSSP Talk "Urban Road Traffic Congestion - Biggest Challenge to India" by Errampalli Madhu,CSIR-CRRI | 1st December, 11:30 a.m.

Centre for Studies in Science Policy

School of Social Sciences, JNU

Invites you to

Talk on

Urban Road Traffic Congestion - Biggest Challenge to India

by

Dr. Errampalli Madhu

Head, Transportation Planning Division, Central Road Research Institute (CSIR-CRRI)

Venue: Room No. 227, 2^nd Floor, SSS-1

Time: 11:30 a.m.

Date: Friday, 1^st December 2017

 

Abstract: Road Transport in India significantly contributes to economy of the country, however on the other side, country is losing these benefits from the ill-effects generated out of that namely congestion and road crashes. Further, the other impacts on environment and effects on human health will be added to this in the urban areas. India has vast road network with heterogeneous vehicular mix, wide variation in driver behavior and different socioeconomic group of road user population which make completely different from any other country. The solutions which are effective in other developed/ developing countries would not work if they are directly implemented. Keeping this in view, one has to critically examine local conditions in depth to arrive at solutions. Though the technologies and expertise available in India these days, there are lot of challenges that are faced by the authorities/ policy makers in improving the travel conditions in the urban areas especially. For instance, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) has been implemented in many countries and reaping the benefits, however, India is still struggling to implement the same to improve traffic conditions. One of the main reasons for this is inability to collect accurate traffic data because of so many issues namely heterogeneity, driver discipline and other obstacles in implementation. The other important measure is designing and implementation of integrated public transportation systems which is highly essential in improving traffic conditions of our cities. In this paper, the traffic problems being faced by urban areas would be discussed in order to understand the present state of the problem. The challenges that exist which hinder in taking up different improvement measures by various authorities and policy makers to implement the solutions and the way forward would be discussed keeping the India road traffic situation.

About the Speaker: Dr. Errampalli Madhu is Principal Scientist and also Head, Transportation Planning Division in Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi and has an experience of about 19 years in R&D and Consultancy activities in the field of Transport planning, Traffic flow modeling and Microscopic simulation, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Road safety audit, Soft-computing techniques application in transport modeling such as fuzzy logic, neural network etc. He is a recipient of Japanese Government Scholarship (Monbugakusho) for 2004 - 2008 and completed PhD during this period at Gifu University, Japan. He has received Bronze Medal Award for two times from Indian Roads Congress (IRC) for his publications in the year 2004 and 2011. As part of his PhD thesis, he had developed a Fuzzy logic based microscopic traffic simulator (FLoMiTSiM) which simulates vehicles as well as commuters at urban road network level and devised a mechanism to evaluate various transport policies. He has also received Best Article Award by ASRTU in 2009 for his publication in Indian Journal of Traffic Management and also Session Best Presentation Award in SCIS & ISIS 2006, University of Tokyo, Japan. He has also received CIDC Viswakarma Award for the category of Scientist in the year March 2016. He was associated in national importance projects namely Road User Cost Studies (RUCS), Urban Road Traffic and Air Pollution (URTRAP) for 8 Major Metropolitan Cities etc. He is a Champion (Project Leader) for the 12^th Five Year Plan Network Project (2012-17) titled "Development and Application of Technologies for Sustainable Transportation (SUSTRANS)". This project has received SKOCH Order of Merit Award in December 2015 and "Excellent" grade by SMC of CSIR. He has published 1 book, chapters/ articles in 3 books and about 122 research papers in various SCI and refereed journals and also in conference proceedings both national and international with 204 citations (Google Scholar) and total SCI impact factor of 6.113.  

All are welcome to attend the lecture.

Coordinator, CSSP Lecture Series

Abstracts submission for the 2nd HEIRRI Conference | Vienna, 27th April

2nd HEIRRI Conference 'Education towards a Responsible Society, Transforming Universities through RRI' 

To be held in Vienna on the 27th April 2018 

Only one week to go! Last days for abstracts submission for the 2nd HEIRRI Conference.

Deadline for abstract submission: November 30th, 2017 (23:59 European Central Time)

The 2nd HEIRRI Conference 'Education towards a responsible society, transforming universities through RRI' will present the results of nearly three years of project activities designed to promote the integration of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) within the education of scientists, engineers and other professionals involved in the R&D process. It will be held in Vienna on the 27th April 2018.

Call for abstracts is now open! We are seeking for contributions presenting RRI practices, projects, programmes and initiatives that demonstrate the application of RRI in higher education.

Specifically, HEIRRI invites applications that put a spotlight on activities designed to integrate more democratic governance in research and innovation with an emphasis on positive societal impacts along with a promotion and application of a more anticipatory, reflexive, inclusive and responsive approach to research and innovation into higher education curricula. The main emphasis should be placed on specific educational outcomes and achievements. The project is seeking for applications from different countries, context and disciplines, both from the humanities and the natural and social sciences.

Key Dates:

Opening of abstract submission: October 26th, 2017

Deadline for abstract submission: November 30th, 2017 (23:59 European Central Time)

Notification of acceptance/rejection: December 20th, 2017

More information on the call for abstracts and rules for submission here.

2nd HEIRRI Conference website: www.heirri.eu/2nd-heirri-conference.

⇒ Call for abstracts (download pdf file)

⇒ Free registration is open. Please, fill in this form with your personal information.

⇒ Join the event on Facebook and use the hashtag #HEIRRIConf on Twitter.

⇒ Funding to attend the 2nd HEIRRI Conference: more information and application forms will be provided in the coming weeks on www.heirri.eu.

-- 

Marta Cayetano - communication officer
HEIRRI - integrating RRI into Higher Education Institutions

heirri@acup.cat

www.heirri.eu

GIAN Short Course "Economics of Science, Technology and Innovation: Empirical Approaches and RCTs" at IIT Indore | 10-14 January

Economics of Science, Technology and Innovation: Empirical Approaches and Randomized Control Trials (RCTs)

Venue: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore

10-14 January 2018

Course details

Scientific advances and technological progress are key drivers of innovation and economic growth. Moreover, innovation in firms is vital in gaining advantage over other firms and sustaining survival in a competitive industry. Thus, policymakers give considerable importance to supporting innovation activities of scientists and firms, as they help fuel economic progress. In light of this, an understanding of the economics of science, technology and innovation is of immense significance for a growing economy like India to provide insights to managers and policymakers in order to incentivize and stimulate the process of innovation.

The course will examine the microeconomic foundations of the determinants of innovation and technical change and how science, technology and innovation can foster economic growth, with a focus on the issues facing emerging economies like India. The course will provide an in-depth overview of recent empirical research related to these topics, with a particular emphasis on the role of patents, R&D funding, and the mobility and collaborations of scientific personnel and inventors.

The course will cover several empir ical methods that economists use to provide r igorous, evidence-based analysis of innovation. Significant attention will be devoted to use of randomized control tr ials (RCTs), which is cur rently anunderutilized method in the field of innovation economics, despite its wide use in other fields of economics, notably in development economics. RCTs have great potential for providing policymakers with evidence about which tools, policies and programs work in increasing innovation and foster ing economic growth. 

Objectives of the Course

Participants will learn about the microeconomic theoretical foundations for the determinants of innovation and how innovation can increase economic growth.

They will learn the core econometric tools used for empirical research in innovation. 

The use of randomized control trials (RCTs) will be covered in depth.

Participants will become familiar with important empirical evidence from research on innovation and technical change.

In teams, participants will develop a proposal for an RCT that could be used to study an innovation policy question.

Who Can Attend

• Research scholars in the field of economics of innovation and intellectual property rights, industrial organization and public policy.
  
• Business executives in the area of IP management
  
• Postgraduate students of Economics and Law.
  

How to Register

• Stage 1: Register on GIAN portal http://www.gian.iitkgp.ac.in/GREGN/index
  
• Stage 2: Course Registration (GIAN Portal)
  
• Click on Course Registration option given at "Economics of Science, Technology and Innovation: Empirical Approaches and Randomized Control Trials (RCTs)". 
  
• Confirm your registration by clicking "Confirm". 
  
• Selected candidates will be intimated through e-mail by course coordinator about further process of registration and fee paymant. Candidates may be directly contact course coordinator at iprgian@iiti.ac.in for further information.
  

Last date to register: 30th November 2017

Teaching Faculty

Dr. Ina Ganguli: is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a core faculty member of the Computational Social Science Institute. She holds a PhD from Harvard University and a Master's in Public  Policy from the University of Michigan. Her primary research areas are labor economics and the economics of science and innovation, and she has run several randomized control trials in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship. Her recent research has focused on the migration of high-skill  workers, the formation of scientific collaborations, and the role of information in entry into scientific careers. Ina is also a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) at the Stockholm School of Economics, and a fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University. She is a recent recipient of an NBER Innovation Policy grant, a Nesta Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) innovation, entrepreneurship and growth experiments grant,  and an Early Career Research Award from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Her research has been published in journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, and Research Policy. The above fee includes all instructional materials and internet facility. 

Coordinator Course: Dr. Ruchi Sharma is an Associate Professor of Economics at Indian Institute of Technology Indore. She has worked as an Assistant Professor at IIT Delhi and held visiting position at IIM Indore. Her research areas are Economics of Innovation, Patent Policy and Technology Transfer (FDI and Licensing). Currently, her research group is working on R&D and patenting by Indian firms, patenting by Indian universities and academic institutions and the impact of FDI on innovation by Indian firms. She has completed sponsored research project funded by Indian Council of Social Sciences Research. She has published research papers in international journals of repute like Economics of Innovation and Technology, Journal of Economic Studies, Global Economic Review and Journal of Intellectual Property Rights and World Patent Information. She was awarded Kusuma Young Faculty Incentive Fellowship at IIT Delhi. 

Contact 

Dr. Ruchi Sharma, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Simrol, Indore, Madhya Pradesh 453552; Email: iprgian@iiti.ac.in | Website: www.gian.iiti.ac.in

Further Details

GIAN Short Course "Technology, Urban Space and Culture: Emerging Paradigms for Global India" at IIT Kharagpur | 8-13 December

Technology, Urban Space and Culture: Emerging Paradigms for Global India

Venue : IIT Kharagpur

Duration : 08-12-2017 to 13-12-2017

Overview

The inter-related or densely overlapping forces of technology and urbanity have transformed human "cultures" beyond familiar recognition. In such a scenario the emerging paradigms of the spiraling globality of the Postcolonial India will rest on how effectively they appropriate and negotiate with this technology and its "differential expressive molarities". However the need of the hour is to find out whether there could be any indigenous, "non-western approaches", resistances and responses to technetronic globality intertwined with the neo-liberal ideology and imperial schemas of the West — hence the course puts emphasis on culling the nuanced "Non Western" and Indian responses to the neo-liberal ideologies of the Western postcolonial Empire The question that it finally aims to ask is whether there could be ways of spiritualizing or affectualizng technology, a technology that is not controlled by "market mandarins" and does not work solely for profit and produces what is called "capitalocenes", but works for enhancing the potencies of the "bio-sphere" 

Modules

A: Theorizing the Mecanosphere : December 8-December 9

B: Cultures of Postcolonial agency and its limits: December 10-December 11

C The Indian responses: December 12-December 13

Number of participants for the course will be limited to 30.

• You are a Research scholar or a Fellow pursuing your Doctorate or M Phil from Academic Institutes and your Research Area is concerned with using Continental, Postcolonial and Indian Epistemic Constructs and Theoretical Lenses to address Socio-Cultural Issues

• You are a MA MTech Student or a Faculty from academic institutions/Universities interested in Critical Humanities and Liberal arts

• You are a Cognoscenti, Writer, Intellectual, Member of the Intelligentsia or some Industrial House interested in and likely to benefit from Critical Theory, Philosophy, Art and Literature, Politics, Socio-Cultural concerns or Interdisciplinary Mode of Research Who Should Attend 

http://www.gian.iitkgp.ac.in/

The Faculty 

• Professor Ian Buchanan is currently the Director of Social Transformation Research, University of Wollongong, Australia. Prof Buchanan has published on a wide variety of subjects across a range of disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, communications studies and philosophy. He is the founding editor of "the international journal of Deleuze Studies".
  
• Professor Ashis Nandy works in CSDS, New Delhi and his research interest centers on the political psychology of violence, cultures of knowledge, utopias and visions, human potentialities and futures. Nandy is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne. Nandy received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007 and was chosen as one of top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2008.
  
• Professor Sundar Sarukkai is currently a professor in The National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. His research interests include philosophy of science and mathematics, phenomenology and philosophy of language and art, drawing on both Indian and Western philosophical traditions. He has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla.
  
• Dr Saswat Samay Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social sciences, IIT Kharagpur, India. He carries out research in critical Theory, postmodern and post-colonial studies and continental Thinking. 
  

Fees

The participation fees for taking the course is as follows:

Participants from abroad : US $500

From Industry/ Research Organizations within India: 20000

From Academic Institutions within India: 3500

No Participation fee for the students or MPhil PhD research scholars of Institutes/Universities/Colleges 

The above fee include all instructional or Course materials. The participants will be provided with accommodation on payment basis.

Course Co-ordinator

Dr Saswat Samay Das, Phone: 03222-283610, 9434019044, Email: saswatdas.bapi@gmail.com

Registration Process: 

Registration for GIAN courses is not automatic because of the constraints on maximum number of participants allowed to register for a course. In order to register for one or multiple non-overlapping courses, you have to apply online using the following steps: 

1. Create login and password at www.gian.iitkgp.ac.in/GREGN/index

2. Login and complete the registration form.

3. Select courses

4. Confirm your application and payment information.

5. Pay Rs. 500 (non-refundable) through online payment gateway.

The course coordinators of the selected courses will go through your application and confirm your selection as a participant one month before the starting date of the courses. Once you are selected you will be informed and requested to pay the full fees through online payment gateway service.

Further Details