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6 million funding to Norwegian-Indian research collaboration

A research collaboration between Norwegian and Indian partners has been granted NOK 6 million. The WISENET lab at UiA is heading the project about autonomous digital technology.

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Gruppebilde, WISENET-lab.

The WISENET researchers are part of the Department of ICT at the Faculty of engineering and science.

Linga Cenkeramaddi, portrait

Professor Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi is the Project Manager for INCAPS.

"This funding is a recognition of our research environment and our research partners," Professor and project manager Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi at WISENET says.

The project is titled "Indo-Norwegian Collaboration in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems" (INCAPS), and the WISENET lab at the Department of ICT and Faculty of Engineering and Science will coordinate the work.

The partners from India are IISc Bangalore, IIT Hyderabad, IIIT Hyderabad and BITS Hyderabad, as well as NTNU and NIVA from Norway. The project’s duration is three years from 2019 to 2022. The funding comes from the INTPART programme run by the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (DIKU).

"The competition for these funds is fierce among Norway’s best research environments, and we have been thoroughly evaluated," Head of WISENET Professor Baltasar Beferull Lozano says.

Increased mobility of researchers and students
The primary goals of the project are among other things to strengthen competitive ability and innovation capacity, solve societal challenges and develop academic environments of high quality.

"The project itself involves a wide variety of research topics, for example smart sensing for autonomous systems, prototypes of wireless communication systems, low-altitude UAV tracking and communication and machine learning (artificial intelligence)," Professor Cenkeramaddi says.

The researchers will also look at how research facilities in both countries can be utilised better. The project will involve exchange of students and researchers.

Important for world-class research
The research programme INTPART, which is granting the money, is one of the main efforts in the government’s strategy to strengthen cooperation with Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, China, Russia and the US.

"International research and education collaboration are important measures to bring Norwegian environments up to world-class level," Minister of Research and Higher Education Iselin Nybø states on the government’s website.

"With this money, we will connect research and higher education, while at the same time involving industries and business sector activities. The goal is to have long-term collaborations with these research countries," Nybø says.

Eight grants in eight attempts

Portrettbilde, Baltasar Beferull Lozano

Professor Baltasar Beferull Lozano, head of the WISENET lab.

INCAPS is one in a long line of externally funded research projects at the WISENET lab. Since the creation of WISENET in 2015, the Lab has obtained eight research projects funded out of eight project proposals submitted.

"In total, around NOK 120 million in external funding have been granted to projects managed and coordinated by WISENET at UiA, something we are very proud of,” Professor Beferull Lozano says.