30th September 2016 Kolkata, India
I was sitting with a group of policemen and border officials in a police hut drinking sweet tea. The younger ones were looking at me anxiously as I started to ask them questions about their work and what they were doing. It was late morning and it was hot outside – around 35°C (or 95 […]
16th September 2016 Kolkata, India
It is a cracking first line for a novel: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.* As a thought – that the past is somewhere different – the line sounds very appealing. The past is distant from us and we can’t access it immediately. But the idea is nonsense, of course, […]
29th August 2016 Bangalore, India
Aerospace is a UK manufacturing success story in the global business of making planes. We are a world leader in innovation, design and manufacturing parts for planes. Over the past several years the UK Science and Innovation Network and Department of International Trade have worked together to boost collaboration between the UK and India. This […]
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2nd May 2016 New Delhi, India
The Indian connection at the heart of the UK automotive boom, and the $4 billion opportunity for Indian companies. As I made my journey into what (on first impressions) appeared to be a rather nondescript northern English town, Crewe, I was surprised to see the number of Indians getting off the train, at the bus station and surprisingly […]
7th March 2016 Science and Innovation Network
In December, we supported a visit of UK advanced manufacturing experts to Pune and Bengaluru in India. This included Ben Kitcher, who represented the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and the University of Sheffield. Ben wrote an excellent blog (originally on the University of Sheffield website) capturing why this sort of visit is so important […]
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4th March 2016 Bangalore, India
One of the UK’s brightest (quite literally) and revolutionary technological developments is Light Fidelity or LiFi. Invented by Professor Harald Haas, LiFi has the power to change how we access and transmit data in offices and home around the world. You can read more about my visit to Prof. Haas’s lab in the University of […]
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17th December 2015 New Delhi, India
Within a span of a few weeks UK and India relations in Science and Innovation received a new impetus by a number of high profile visits! In mid-November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the UK during which he, along with Prime Minister David Cameron announced a number of joint research and innovation initiatives that address […]
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11th December 2015 New Delhi, India
The end of November saw the much anticipated launch of a joint funding call on Agri-Food. This call is funded by Newton-Bhabha – our five year £50 million joint programme with India. Under Newton-Bhabha, Innovate UK, the UK Research Councils and India’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) plan to invest £10 million on developing joint industrial […]
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30th November 2015 Mumbai, India
Last month, I participated in a one-day India-UK workshop on innovation and technology commercialisation. This programme was jointly organised by my colleagues from the UK Science and Innovation Network and UK Trade and Investment in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. See press article here. I was one of six panelists in a discussion on Internationalising Innovations – Opportunities […]
27th November 2015 Chennai, India
Today I celebrate 20 years in the Foreign Office. I joined, like many others, because I wanted to see the world and be a part of something that mattered. I remember during the induction a colleague who was less awed by the surroundings asking how long it would take to get promoted (answer 12 years if […]