BioVoice News April 2017 Issue 11 Volume 1 | Page 87

Apart from that the Four India-UK Virtual Joint Centres in Agricultural Nitrogen have been established which will eventually integrate into the activities of Joint Plant Science Research Centre. “The Department of Biotechnology is looking to expand global partnership and will be open to signing of such MoU with other countries,” informed the Minister of State for Science & Technology, Mr Y S Chowdary recently in the Parliament. ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ aims at turning ideas into startups The ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ has already been launched in collaboration with i4c, MyGov, Persistent Systems, NASSCOM and Rambhau Mhalgi Pabodini. While interacting with the media recently, the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Prakash Javadekar detailed out the uniqueness of this initiative and said “the scale and reach of Smart India Hackathon 2017 is unprecedented, for the first time so many different ministries/ departments came together, and posted their 598 problems for students seeking innovative solutions” He said ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ has been launched to build Digital India of our dreams and to engage our youth directly with nation building. About 30 different Govt departments/ministries are involved as partners eg. Ministry of Railways, External affairs, Steel, Postal Services, ISRO, NCPCR, etc. For the first time, govt. departments were directly engaging with students and challenging them to build digital solutions to improve their efficiency, plug revenue leakages and corruption. We have multiple prizes worth Rs 50 lakhs for students but more importantly, we hope the participating ministries will adopt many of the products developed during the Grand Finale. Moreover, we also expect NASSCOM and other funding agencies like AICTE, DST, DBT and ICMR to select best ideas and support them to convert into startups, Mr Javadekar added. University of Cambridge. Five applicants have been selected and are working under the joint unestablished post of Lectureship. He said to ensure the success of Smart India Hackathon 2017, we are also doing multiple online training sessions for students and for the first time, we hope to train more than 30,000 students through these online training sessions. For the first time, we hope to train more than 30,000 students through these online training sessions. BIOVOICENEWS.COM 87