In order to have more centres of excellence, initiative has to be taken at the university level and institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) must play a crucial role to achieve this, renowned astronomer, Sir Arnold Wolfendale has said.
"I have been coming to TIFR for 50 years, but I find the TIFR-university link is still not satisfactory and I am, in fact, disappointed," Wolfendale said.
He was speaking at the three-day Bhabha Centenary symposium on `science and technology at the frontiers' which concluded here yesterday. "I find TIFR is having a lot of collaborations with universities abroad but not in India. This has to improve," he said.
"In India I find institutions (of excellence) are subservient to universities. It is the universities that relied on institutions to follow up ideas and not the other way round," the UK-based scientist said.
"This tradition in India, I think, is because of the erstwhile British Raj. I apologise for that," Wolfendale said."A lot more could be done to strengthen the link between (research) institutions and universities. We have some centres of excellence, but we need many more."
Asked whether he has some ideas how India can go forward on this front, he said, "I can't think of any specific model at this moment." Meanwhile, TIFR scientists said they have formal collaboration with around 10 universities abroad, including Europe, US and Israel, while there are several informal tie ups.
However, in India, TIFR (a Deemed University) has research collaboration with only IIT-Mumbai and Manipal University. The Department of Atomic Energy, to which TIFR belongs, de-linking itself from University of Mumbai and became a Deemed University in 2003.
The research students of TIFR were getting their degrees from University of Mumbai till 2002, the scientists said.
Comments