A two-day India-UK Technical Workshop on Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services commenced at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Mandi.
This is the first International Workshop being held in the new Komand campus of IIT, Mandi. Thirty participants drawn from the reputed universities of UK and 50 from the noted Indian universities from across the country have converged for the first time to develop next generation wireless technologies especially tailored to the Indian needs.
This mega consortium is simultaneously developing low cost applications using wireless networks particularly to serve the needs of the rural India. The main thrust is at reflecting research work done to date since the last such workshop held at the Cambridge University in UK.
The funding agencies to implement the gigantic task are the department of Science and Technology, government of India and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom, equally sharing the project cost.
It is claimed that this is the largest consortium of collaborate research between UK and India involving as many as 200 research scientists from both the countries. The scientists have taken upon themselves the challenging task of creating the latest network in India and UK of the magnitude which did not exist in the past.
This is claimed to be the first multi institution cross continent project involving academia in India and UK coupled with active participation of industry.
The consortium comprises nine leading research universities in UK, six IIT and IISc, R&D organisations and major industrial partners in UK and India. The University of Ulster in Northern Ireland is the lead institution of UK and the IIT Madras is the lead institution from India joined by five other IITs of Bombay, Delhi, Mandi, Kanpur and Hydrabad.
The other companies participating in the consortium include BT, Toshiba, Infosys, Wipro & Sasken among others. Consortium is headed by Prof Gerakrd Parr of Ulster University (UK) and Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras.