Friday, January 27, 2006

The fabulous fab facility


It's now official. The Economic Times reported today that IISc's plans to set up a minifab facility (critical for our Institute's research program in micro-electro-mechanical systems) has finally got some big funding from the Government -- to be precise, from the Union Ministry of Information and Communication Technology. We knew this has been in the works for quite a while, but the official announcement of the 50-crore (500 million) rupee grant is sweet. A similar grant is going to IIT-B as well.

The report has extensive quotes from Prof. S. Mohan, the CEO of the Society for Innovation and Development, set up by IISc for promoting large-scale interactions between IISc and industry. From the SID site:

... SID strives to bring the leading intellectuals of IISc and the fruits of their research and development efforts closer to industries and business establishments in a cordial way with prosperity of the Nation as the ultimate goal.

The MEMS project is going to be a megaproject with the involvement of some 40 scientists from different disciplines. Some of the key scientists are: Prof. Rudra Pratap of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Navakant Bhat of the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, and one of the recepients of this year's Swarnajayanti Fellowships.

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