A total of 11 career researchers from India and Germany have received the ‘Paired Early Career Fellowship in Applied Research (PECFAR)’ which will facilitate their short-duration visit to explore opportunities for connecting and networking for research collaborations between India and Germany in frontier areas of science and technology.
This is the first time researchers have received this award under the PECFAR, which was launched recently to facilitate a two-way exchange between early-career researchers from India and German. It is envisaged that such engagements through networking would further establish long-term bilateral collaborations and provide an opportunity to explore the Indian and German research landscape for potential collaborations.
The initiative has been launched by the Indo-German Science & Technology Centre (IGSTC), a bilateral institution established by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Government of India, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Government of Germany to promote Science and Technology collaborations with a focus on applied research.
IGSTC organised a virtual Award Felicitation Ceremony on 15th November 2022. Shri. S.K. Varshney, Adviser & Head, International Cooperation, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India & Indian Co-Chair and Ms. Kathrin Meyer, Head of the Division Cooperation with Asia and Oceania, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Govt. of Germany & German Co-Chair addressed the awardees and inspired them to take the opportunity to visit India and Germany for exploring various S&T aspects including infrastructure/lab facilities, work culture, entrepreneurship avenues, and inter-institutional networking. Each pair of Indian and German Awardees pitched their views on the programme and expressed how such opportunities will create a foundation for their future research endeavours.
The details of the awardees of the PECFAR-2022 are as below:
| No. | Name & Affiliation of the paired fellows | |
| India | Germany | |
| 1 | Tarun Rambha, IISc Bangalore | Maximilian Schiffer, TU Munich |
| 2 | Surabhi Jain, IIT-ISM Dhanbad | Ana Paula Ribera, TU Munich |
| 3 | Pankaj Khanna, IIT Gandhinagar | Samuel Thomas Thiele, Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology |
| 4 | Ankit Jain, IIT Bombay | Abhishek Khetan, RWTH Aachen |
| 5 | Sai Gautam Gopalakrishnan, IISc Bangalore | Hans-Georg Steinrück, Paderborn University |
| 6 | Uma Shanker, Central University of Punjab | Amit Khurana, RWTH University Hospital |
| 7 | Saikat Kumar Shome, CSIR-CMERI, Durgapur | Amartya Ganguly, TU Munich |
| 8 | Tanmoy Chakraborty, IIT Delhi | Debarghya Ghoshdastidar, TU Munich |
| 9 | Prateek Saxena, IIT Mandi | Christian Lahoda, TU Berlin |
| 10 | Bukke Kiran Naik, NIT Rourkela | Sumit Agarwal, PTB, Braunschweig |
| 11 | Khalid Muzamil Gani, NIT Srinagar | Tavseef Mairaj Shah, Hamburg University of Technology |