Salient Features of a CoE

• The CoE should be relevant to Indian technological needs and have a long-term vision of evolving technological requirements and changing natural/societal constraints

• A Centre of Excellence (CoE) is expected to be a collaborative activity between a team of high quality researchers in the institution and researchers or research users in several companies or organizations. In cases where the nature of research is partially related to production or improvement of public goods, collaboration may include appropriate public agencies. In all cases, however, CoEs will need to demonstrate that the majority of their collaborators are from private firms (if such exist within the thematic research areas).

• The CoE is expected to contribute significantly both to economic advancement and to building a robust research culture in institutions that is more applied and collaborative in nature. In particular, the CoE is expected to address emerging industry and societal needs in close collaboration with industries and users. The scientific merit of the research undertaken is as important as the relevance to economic growth and development.

• The CoE is expected to further scale-up Postgraduate Education through increased enrolments for Masters and Doctoral programmes in topics closely linked to the thematic areas of the CoE and therefore closely linked to economic and societal needs. Some of these students could also undertake their research within collaborating firms.

• The Centre should join faculty members from several departments around a common research programme, in which all the collaborating departments are expected to share their physical and intellectual resources with each other. Evaluation will give greater weight to CoEs that are multi-disciplinary in nature.

• The Centre is expected to trigger an R&D culture in the institutions as evidenced by significant increase in commercial applications and research outputs, collaborative and sponsored research, publications, in reputed national/international journals and conferences, patents, innovations, commercialised products and PhD enrolments.

• The Centre is expected to increase collaboration with National and International academic and research institutions/organizations. This will facilitate transfer of technology and knowledge to improve the quality of research and development, and aim to create a critical mass of researchers with potential for global research and development.