“Young Indian and Americans minds are saving lives today,” said US Ambassador to India Richard R Verma.
Delivering a talk on ‘Technology, Innovation and Societal Change’ at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), Verma said collaboration between Indian and American minds have increasingly continued to save and change lives.
The US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institute for Mental Health and Neurosciences here in Bengaluru are right now engaged in joint research to more effectively diagnose, test, and treat acute encephalitis syndrome, which causes thousands of illnesses and hundreds of deaths every year around the world.
In Bengaluru, the CDC is working with India’s National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics to detect, control and prevent diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, which cause 60 per cent of all human illness.
“Disease knows no borders and the advances that our scientist make together will prevent untold suffering for people around the world,” said Verma.
Engineers in Bengaluru and Silicon Valley have also collaborated to create a portable ventilator allowing hospitals and clinics in rural areas to provide lifesaving care.
Indian innovators
Talking about Indian innovators and their ties to America, Verma said, “A discussion about US and Indian innovation in Bengaluru would be incomplete without mentioning a few of the many visionaries from this part of India, who have brought our peoples closer together creating thousands of Indian and American jobs in the process.”
Luminaries from Bengaluru such as N R Narayanamurthy and Sabeer Bhatia were also mentioned. Narayanamurthy was just 35 when he established Infosys in 1981. Sabeer Bhatia, who grew up in Bengaluru and Pune and attended Caltech and Stanford, founded Hotmail in 1996.
“I’d like to express my profound personal admiration for IIM Bangalore Board’s Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw for her pioneering work in biopharma and commitment to finding innovative pathways for providing essential services to disadvantaged communities,” Verma said.
Now a new generation of Indian minds are advancing towards courageous new ideas, and following in their footsteps.
Government role
Talking about the government’s role, Verma said, “Back in 2009, before innovation and start-ups became the buzzwords that they are today, our governments established the US-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund.”
“Seeded with a ₹64 crore endowment at the US Embassy, the fund partners with India’s Department of Science and Technology (BST) to issue yearly calls for proposals for up to ₹2.5 crore each. To date we have funded 18 proposals including technologies to remove toxic arsenic from groundwater in West Bengal and Bihar, a solar electric tractor; a low-cost portable auto-refractor to prescribe corrective eyeglasses in areas without eye doctors; a device to resuscitate newborn babies who can’t breathe; seed treatments to improve stress tolerance in crops; and many more ideas are in the pipeline,” he added.