R. MadhanDirector
Indo-German Science & Technology Centre (IGSTC)
Mr. R. Madhan has taken over the position to lead the bilateral Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) as its Director on 29th December 2020 and has been actively catalyzing Indo-German Science & Technology partnerships.
Mr. Madhan during his tenure as Director, IGSTC had expanded the programme portfolio of IGSTC for providing opportunities to a large community including early career, mid-career and cross gender representation.
He had initiated major programmes to enhance involvement of Indo-German Scientific communities and to foster strategic partnerships. The new programmes initiated were IGSTC Industrial Fellowship (IF) for industrial exposure in Germany for young Indian researchers, Women Involvement in Science and Engineering Research (WISER) to facilitate lateral entry for women in STEM, Paired Early Career Fellowship in Applied Research (PECFAR) for creating avenues for two-way exchange of young research in pairs and Small Immediate Need Grants (SING) for providing quick assistance to kick off ad-hoc opportunities with fast track processing.
He also added an important aspect as per the IGSTC’s mandate to strengthen public-private partnerships by developing academia-industry connect programmes to foster industrial research, innovation and techno-entrepreneurship and forged tie-ups with industries like BASF and TATA Steel.
He had earlier been associated with development of marine instrumentation and autonomous underwater technology for oceanographic research at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa from 1991 to 2020. As a Chief Scientist and Head of the Marine Instrumentation Department at CSIR-NIO, he has contributed in the development of several marine robots including Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)-MAYA, remotely operated surface vehicles and autonomous vertical profilers (AVP). He played a key role in transferring AUV and AVP technology know-how to industry and in commercialization of the same. He had also played a major role in capacity building and popularizing marine robotics in India.
Mr. Madhan had also served as the Science Counselor at the Embassy of India, Berlin, Germany for three years during which he ably facilitated, coordinated and contributed in enhancing bilateral cooperation between India and Germany. He played a major role in connecting scientists and academicians of India & Germany on several areas including clean energy, next generation batteries, high energy physics, marine robotics, biotechnology, molecular biology, space research, climate research, education and sustainable studies. He contributed significantly in connecting German institutions (including Fraunhofer, Leibniz, Helmholtz, Max Planck Institutes, TU9, Excellence Initiative Universities) with Indian counterparts (including CSIR, DBT, DST, MoES, ICAR, IISc, IIT).
His experience with international partners includes work with the Institute for System and Robotics (ISR), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon through the Indo-Portuguese bilateral project on marine technologies and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, California through the POGO-SCOR fellowship.
He is the recipient of the Meritorious Invention Award from the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of S & T, New Delhi for "Autonomous Vertical Profiler (AVP)" for the year 2010. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, India.
His research career following the Electrical & Electronics Engineering degree from REC, Calicut and Master’s degree in Power & Energy systems from REC, Surathkal has resulted in several publications in journals and conferences in addition to international patents.