NITI Aayog organized a national level consultative meeting, “Institutional Structures & Processes for Research Translation and Productization” on 6^th April, 2026 in NITI Aayog, New Delhi, under the chairmanship of Dr V.K. Saraswat, Member (S&T), NITI Aayog. The meeting brought together a distinguished gathering of directors and CEOs of leading Research Parks, Innovation Hubs, and S&T Clusters, to collectively deliberate on different institutional models and processes for research translation and productization. Prof. Vivek Kumar Singh, Programme Director (S&T) welcomed all the participants and set the context of the meeting, emphasizing the need for creating appropriate institutional structures and enabling processes to facilitate the translation of knowledge generated in different institutions into usable technologies and products.

In his opening remarks, Dr. V. K. Saraswat, highlighted the existent significant gap between industry and academia in the Indian science and technology ecosystem, and the need for enablers to promote and accelerate industry and academia collaboration. Dr. Saraswat further stressed that at present, the Indian industry continues to import technologies from outside, resulting in dependence on foreign providers and a weakened innovation ecosystem. Emphasizing the need for systemic reform, he called for the development of a robust framework and measurable metrics to assess how effectively research parks and innovation hubs are facilitating the translation of research, and how such models can be scaled up across the country.

The meeting comprised detailed presentations by Directors and CEOs from a diverse set of institutional structures, organized in two technical sessions. It included Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (CCAMP), ARTPARK IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras Research Park, ASPIRE IIT Bombay, and Research Parks and technology development and translation structures at IITs in Kanpur, Roorkee, Indore, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, and Ropar.  The meeting also included presentations by Directors of two premier CSIR Labs, namely by Dr H.S. Bisht from CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum and Dr Srinivasa Reddy from CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology. Dr Jitendra Kumar, MD, BIRAC also attended the meeting and shared his remarks on the necessary translation structures required at different stages of the innovation pipeline. The meeting was attended by senior scientists and division heads from the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), and Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The distinguished participants provided focused inputs to strengthen the research translation ecosystem and promote industry academia interaction, such as creation of testing, prototyping and benchmarking facilities in research and innovation parks, setting up effective business development groups in R&D institutions, embedding an effective TTO setup in R&D offices of academic institutions, exploring provisions like Industry needs focused Ph.D. program, and improved funding support for technologies to navigate through the valley of death. Issues of TRL assessment and well-designated bodies for the purpose were also discussed. The participants appreciated the roll out of the Research Development and Innovation Fund (RDIF) and expressed that it may create a good funding support system for startups and MSMEs in various technology domains.

In his closing remarks, Dr. Saraswat appreciated the contribution of all the distinguished participants and shared rich insights and practical suggestions towards creating a robust framework for evaluating and strengthening the research translation ecosystem in the country. He assured the participants about NITI Aayog’s commitment to coordinated efforts across institutions, industry, and government to support the development of an ecosystem capable of driving innovation, research translation and technology development to meet the technological needs of the country.

 

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