The DST-Technology Enabling Centre at the University of Hyderabad (DST-UoH-TEC) organized a 2-day TEC-Conclave-2023 on the 17th and 18th of April 2023. This conclave is intended to review the progress of TECs created by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, in 22 universities spanning across the nation. The Coordinators and Co-coordinators of all the TECs attended the conclave and there were about 50 participants in the meeting. Expert Advisory Group members under the chairmanship of Prof. NS Vyas (IIT Kanpur) and members Prof. K. Sankaran (Anna University), Dr. Sudha Mysore) ICAR-IIHR), Dr. Devi Prasad (NITI Aayog), Dr. Anita Aggarwal and Dr. Krishna Kanth Pulicherla (DST) Dr. Sanjay Kumar (CSIR-NML) and Utpal Bora (IIT-Guwahati) reviewed the progress.
Prof. N.S. Vyas welcomed the participants and gave his opening remarks. The first session started with expert talk by Prof. Sankaran. He presented the model to take the laboratory product to the market, different Technology Readiness Levels (TRL’s) and stressed the need for more industry-academia collaborations in developing technologies. This talk was followed by expert comments from Dr. Sudha Mysore, Dr. P. Krishna Kanth and Dr. Anita Aggarwal, in which they briefly touched upon the expectation of DST from the DST-TECs and their role in academia-industry collaboration.
All the phase-I TECs presented their progress highlighting the achievements that included IPR generated, technology mining, consultancy projects, industrial collaborations etc. The number of outreach activities taken up for the students and faculty in their respective areas were also shown by the TECs. The second day started with the success stories from Technology Development Programs of the Department of Science and Technology. Dr. Vivekananda Kattimani (Sibar Institute of Dental Sciences, Guntur), Dr. Sachin Mandavgane (Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur) and Dr. Ashok Kumar (PSG college of Technology, Coimbatore). They explained their work, the challenges faced and the success they achieved. This session was followed by presentations by phase-II TECs highlighting short summary of their TECs and future work plan to promote industry-oriented research in the laboratories. The conclave was concluded by Dr. Anita Aggarwal and Dr. P. Krishna Kanth with several suggestions by the chairperson and other EAG members to all TEC centres and innovative plans were shared to shape the future of innovation and technology-enablement.