UK team visits Technopark

T H I R U V A N A N - THAPURAM: A twomember team from the UK has visited the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) campus here in Technopark. The team, comprising Mr Ian Thornton, Research Associate, and National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and Mr Tom Wells of the British High Commission, held discussions with ICFOSS Director Satish Babu in areas surrounding innovation in India in general, and the application of Open Source approaches to innovation in particular, Technopark sources said on Tuesday. The dignitaries visited ICFOSS as part of a UKIndia international research programme on innovation project that aims at mapping research and innovation in India. NESTA is one of the foremost independent experts working on innovation, and is currently working on a project mapping research and innovation in India, in partnership with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce, the UK Research Councils and the UK-India Education Research initiative. The project will provide recommendations on how UK and India could engage more closely in the domain of innovation for the benefi ts of both countries. “Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, in the 97th Session of Indian Science Congress held in January 2010 in Trivandrum, had declared the period 2010- 2020 as the Decade of Innovation’ for India. The aim of this declaration was to develop a supportive ecosystem for innovation in the country, so as to produce solutions for societal needs in realms such as health-care, energy, urban, infrastructure, water and transportation, in addition to Information Technology and hi-tech areas,” Satish Babu said. “The FOSS movement in the last two decades has had considerable impact in enhancing innovation in software through ensuring access of code to communities, and through transparent and publicly-accountable development methodologies. In our discussions today with the visiting dignitaries, we see a great opportunity to engage with academic, research and industry organization in the UK to identify innovation-friendly frameworks areas such as open hardware, open research, drug discovery, open accessing publishing and open innovation,” he added.