Dr. Dibakar Das, Professor, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SEST) at University of Hyderabad (UoH) has received a fellowship award “Make Our Planet Great Again” Short-Stay program from French Government based on a Global competition. He is one of the ONLY two Indians to receive this award. The other person is a Professor at IISC Bangalore.
Dr. Das is in the principal list of laureates and has been selected amongst more than 350 candidates. He will be working on the topic Lead-free ceramics for low-loss capacitors dedicated to electrical energy storage at the University of the Littoral Opal Coast, also known as ULCO, a French university, based in Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk and Saint Omer in December 2018. This project aims to develop suitable lead-free based ferroelectric ceramics with high ferroelectric-paraelectric transition temperature, low dielectric loss, high capacitance, high-thermal stability of the dielectric properties while maintaining high energy density suitable for high temperature and high frequency energy storage applications.
France’s ministries of Europe and foreign affairs (MEAE) and of higher education, research, and innovation (MESRI) have implemented a program to support short stays in French research institutions for foreign scientists seeking to do research on a topic related to earth systems, climate change and sustainability, or the energy transition. Under the program, approximately 40 individuals will receive funding for short research stays between the months of August and December 2018.
Three broad research themes are prioritized under this program: earth systems, climate change and sustainability, and the energy transition.
On June 1, 2017, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, launched the Make Our Planet Great Again initiative in order to express France’s support for students, researchers, entrepreneurs, associations and NGOs involved in the fight against climate change. This initiative met with worldwide enthusiasm and generated more than 11,000 expressions of interest from around the world on the makeourplanetgreatagain.fr platform, including 5,000 from researchers and students. Among these 5,000 messages, approximately 1,800 were complete applications for a study or research stay in France or collaboration with a French research team.
More details of the program is available at
https://www.campusfrance.org/en/short-stays-14-days-to-5-months-for-foreign-researchers