A soothing stress buster, a solution for mental disorders, a clue to clearing traffic jams. The three situations may seem unrelated, but what they all have in common is the research that went into their creation. A core team of researchers has arrived at findings that are now being used by more people.
The frontiers of research could possibly reach higher realms with some encouragement. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone everywhere.
“To achieve this goal, researchers need to be boosted by creating a better working environment and opportunities for them. In addition to political support, financial investment should increase,” said Infosys. S. Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of the Science Foundation Board of Directors and co-founder of Infosys Ltd, spoke at the 2022 Infosys Prize Ceremony.
Public-private philanthropic collaboration can lead to improved funding. Better funding could pave the way for solving problems such as delivering energy for all, solving life-threatening diseases, and mitigating the impacts of climate change. Incremental advances in research could lead to clean energy and early cancer detection. This can be understood as return on investment (RoI). “ISF recognizes groundbreaking research that raises new questions. We support such research so they can expand their work and impact society.” ‘ he added Gopalakrishnan.
Critical thinking, curiosity, and analytical skills help researchers fine-tune their findings. Research breakthroughs require the support of world-class infrastructure. A good example is the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, which devised an artificial heart to combat heart disease. This is unique and should be useful for heart transplantation. Come to think of it, there is a possibility that not only heart care but also equipment can be manufactured in India without relying on imports of medical equipment. This will require new pursuits in biomedical research and may make-in his India vision a reality.
Another example is the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Center, which will open in IIT Madras in 2022. This state-of-the-art center aims to map the human brain at the cellular and connectivity level, with an emphasis on high-resolution brain imaging. This explains the need to understand the data emerging from brain research. IIT Madras will train undergraduate and graduate students in areas such as neuroscience, neurocomputing, and machine learning techniques on cutting-edge brain data.
Research initiatives are not limited to IIT alone. Several other excellent institutions conduct research that encourages funding complete with intellectual property (IP) protection. One such institution is the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which recently made headlines in patents. According to news reports, IISc scientists and researchers revealed that in 2022 he has applied for 585 patents. This means that on average he had two patents filed every three days. It is clear that IISc encourages research patents. This pace sets the tone for incubation and lab-to-market research. Research-oriented goals may refer to commercial use. Researchers seek a combination of science, engineering and technology, but many discoveries are made through interdisciplinary approaches. For example, music can help patients recover. Thinking in this way may open up even more possibilities.
India is in a promising vantage point for research. Almost 20% of the world’s population lives in this country, so it has a wealth of data. This could help us leverage the data we get from this demographic bonus. Besides that, global collaboration may be the way to go. This creates a diversity of ideas that can be applied to complex problems.
Infosys Prize 2022 winners announced in November 2022. The award ceremony was held last week.
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