BROWN AWARDS £5 MILLION FOR INDO-BRITISH R&D
(22 January 2007)

The Rt Hon Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced the successful applicants in the first round of research awards under the UK-India Education and Research Initiative. A total of over £5 million was awarded to teams from over 70 institutions in the UK and India, in 6 Major and 23 Standard Awards. The collaborating teams will use their Awards to research areas such as environmentally friendly aeroplanes, climate change and human genetic makeup.

The UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) was launched by Tony Blair in April 2006 and is designed to increase education and research cooperation between the UK and India.

Gordon Brown said: “Each of the winners are evidence of the strength of the education links, research partnerships and learning collaborations between our two countries. And these are themselves a sign of strength of the much broader economic, political and cultural relationship between our two countries that I have had the privilege to witness for myself on my visit this week.”

There was an overwhelming response to the Call for Bids for these awards, with over two hundred and fifty applications received for Standard Awards, which are worth up to £150,000 each, and over a hundred expressions of interest for the Major Awards which are worth up to £500,000 each. Applications were evaluated by a joint India-UK Evaluation Panel, and over 800 reviewers in both countries were approached to comment on the bids.

Successful collaborators for Major Awards are:

University of Cambridge and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology Hyderabad on Genomics

University of Nottingham and the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre, Lucknow on the Animal Stress-Response Network.

University of Leicester and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on Reliable Smart Adaptable Air Vehicles

Imperial College, London University and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on Smart Materials for Environment-Friendly Aero-engines

Walker Institute, University of Reading and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune on Regional Climate Change

City University and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi on Application Specific Micro-Structured Optical Fibres

THE AWARDS TO LEICESTER

A bid led by Professor Ian Postlethwaite, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Engineering at the University of Leicester, received a Major Award. The research aims to develop novel control algorithms and technologies in two areas of application, which are of importance to both the UK and India:

• Uninhabited air-vehicles (UAVs) and micro-satellites in search and rescue scenarios.
• High performance piloted aircraft, where poor handling qualities result in piloted-induced oscillations (PIOs).

Professor Postlethwaite said: “The research objectives will involve the development of new methods and techniques for the design of robust, reconfigurable control systems for UAVs, especially light-weight UAVs.

Also from Leicester, receiving a Standard Award is Professor Anthony Brookes of the Department of Genetics.

He said: “Human gene sequence (genome) variations contribute substantially to inter-individual differences in morbidity and mortality. Globally, enormous efforts are being made to dissect this relationship so that genetic markers can be deployed for enhanced disease risk prediction, clinical prognosis, and personalised medicine.

“A critical component will be the creation of effective database solutions populated with globally relevant genetic information that specifies genotype to phenotype (G2P) relationships. To this end, our UK-India project will merge our previously separate efforts in the G2P database field, and underpin this with laboratory analysis of human copy-number variation (CNV) in complex disease genes across the whole Indian population.

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