Together we are stronger

The Science and Innovation Network in India travelled all over the country last week for the first part of the EU Science and Technology awareness campaign.

We started with a busy day last Monday (10th September). Tom Wells, Deputy Head of the team, was presenting in Chennai. He was joined by Vimal Subramanian and Sam Kumar of the Knowledge Economy team in our Chennai office. It was great to be able to introduce our Vimal and Sam to the crowd and highlight the fact that we are expanding our presence in the city, and across India. Tom, with help from @UKinIndia when he was presenting, tweeted live from the event. See Tom’s Storify page for a summary of the tweets from the day. My personal favourite “Why #EUresearch? Partly good public transport and availability of vegetarian food!”. The closing remark from the Finnish delegates’ presentation also provides the title of this post.

Also on Monday Kinchit Bihani, Senior S&I Adviser in Mumbai, was presenting there, joined by our newest team member, Sunita Singh. Tuesday then saw Kinchit  presenting again but this time in Pune, joined by Sunita and also Swapna Hedge. Another member of our expanding team, Swapna is our Knowledge Economy Officer based in Pune. More information about our Knowledge Economy Team and where they are based can be found here.

Wednesday was then Tom’s turn again, but on home ground in Bangalore. He was joined by Sunil Kumar and Shashi Kalyan, both part of the Science and Innovation Network team there. Meeting people is often a highlight of events like these. After his presentation Tom got talking to the CEO of a nanotech SME who is interested in partnering with the UK, and as a result was able to introduce him to two people at the launch of the Bangalore-Cambridge Innovation Network (more on this next week). It’s that kind of introduction we exist to make!

And finally to finish the week Mark Sinclair, Head of the Science and Innovation Network in India, travelled to Ahmedbad on Friday to present, accompanied by Catherine Brain, one of the team based in Delhi.

It has been really great presenting UK opportunities to over 350 people over the week, and being able to highlight opportunities to work with the UK, including open UK-India research calls worth over £20m. At each city there were a number of enthusiastic students and researchers keen to know about funding opportunities. We also heard some really strong tips from Indian researchers who have already worked with the EU, with the top tip being to allow plenty of time to write your grants. Tom tweeted a number of others here.

There are still two more weeks left of the EU Science and Technology awareness campaign and the Science and Innovation Network will be appearing at a number of the upcoming events (with Sunil presenting today in Thiruvananthapuram). We will also have members of the RCUK India team joining us in some of the cities as well. Please check the timetable for more information and to book your place.  We hope to see you at one of the events.

And if you are unable to make it to any of the presentations and want to find out more about UK-Indo collaboration and research opportunities then we’ve uploaded a copy of the presentation here.