The UK Science Minister recently announced a series of research programmes from the Newton Fund worth up to £80 million to address global challenges affecting people in India; this funding includes an amount of £8.4 million set to improve water quality.
The investments were announced during an event at the India-UK Tech Summit in New Delhi – India’s premier science and technology showcase, attended by UK and Indian Prime Ministers Theresa May and Narendra Modi as well as British businesses, and science and technology experts.
These newly-announced programmes will take the amount of UK-India investment in research via the Newton Fund up to £200 million by 2021, and brings together world class UK excellence across these sectors with expertise from India to address global challenges through science and technology.
A number of the new UK-India Newton Fund programmes were announced by Science Minister Jo Johnson at the Education, Science and Innovation Futures event, including:
- A £13 million UK-India research programme to strengthen the global fight against anti-microbial resistance, announced during the opening of the first RCUK-DBT Strategic Group on AMR on 9 November (RCUK)
- A £7.4 million programme on energy demand reduction in the built environment to improve health and wellbeing and lower energy costs for building users (RCUK)
- An £8.4 million programme to improve water quality (RCUK)
- The £12.6 million launch of phase 2 of Global Research Programme in Women and Children’s Health between the UK and India to study reproductive health issues facing women and their unborn children in low and middle income countries (RCUK)
- The £16 million programme to support commercially focused research and development partnerships that bring innovative biotechnologies to market for cleaning, processing and using industrial waste streams (Research Councils UK – RCUK)
Johnson said:
“Through the Newton Fund we’re working together to improve the lives of millions across the world and we are continuing to look at opportunities to expand this partnership to include joint funding for social science and humanities programmes.â€
The first annual £1 million Newton Prize, which will recognise the Newton Fund’s best science or innovation that promotes the economic development and social welfare of partner countries was also announced at the Event.
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