Review of 2013

2013 has been quite a year for the UK Science and Innovation Network and our partners in India. In January, we took part in the visit of UK Health Minister, Anna Soubry. Health was a major theme of our work this year, which covered medical devices, regulations, an MoU signing, and preparations for workshops on aging and mental health.

Affordable healthcare is also one theme of the new UK-India programme of Industrial R&D support, alongside energy systems technology. Both areas were the subject of workshops we ran during the year with Accelerator India and various Knowledge Transfer Networks with discussions on medical devices, smart power and digital health.

The start of the year also saw the visit of the then UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor Sir John Beddington to speak at the Indian Science Congress in Kolkata. 10 months later, in November, the new GCSA Sir Mark Walport was back on Indian soil taking part in the week celebrating RCUK India’s 5^th Anniversary and the wider UK-India research and innovation relationship.

This celebration was a moment to mark the milestone of £150m of joint UK-India research funding committed since 2008. This milestone was celebrated during an evening reception where a document detailing every funded UK-India research project was launched. We also held an innovation showcase during the week to show off the UK’s innovation capability, and held a series of workshops to discuss science and the media.

In April, an IP tool kit was launched to help researchers working on UK-India research projects consider intellectual property rights. This formed part of our major strand of work promoting innovation between the UK and India – one of the priorities set out in 2012’s Science and Innovation Council.

In May, Sir David King visited India as part of the Chevening Lecture Series to speak about Future Cities. This was followed up by a delegation from the Design Council in November, who signed an MoU with their Indian counterparts. Future cities is likely to be a major area of work for us in the… future!

During the year, we continued to work closely with the Royal Society of Chemistry, who are co-located with the Bangalore team, on open source drug discovery, water chemistry and potentially a new line of work in green chemistry.

In December, we announced the winners of the Bangalore Cambridge Biotech Innovation Contest, they’ll visit the UK in early 2014. We also had three UK based Nobel Prize winners in India to give lectures – all perfect ambassadors for the UK’s research excellence. The year ended with most of us heading to London for our bi-annual global conference. This was a chance for us to meet other SINners around the world, share ideas for how we work and hear about UK priorities.

Our Network’s Annual report was launched during the conference and gives a great overview of our work. We also heard a lot about the UK’s growing network of Technology and Innovation Catapult Centres and related industrial strategies. Both are going to be priorities for us next year.

All that remains is to wish you a (belated) Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Watch this space for what’s coming up in 2014.