ISTAD

Vision and Mission

“To develop and execute a focused, proactive and sustainable approach for international S&T collaborations that would maximize the intellectual benefits to CSIR and it’s people for catalyzing industrial & societal development and enhance CSIR’s business portfolio & potential thereby positioning CSIR internationally as a major provider of S&T expertise/services for the developing and least developed countries and building bridges of friendships internationally through science and technology (S&T) diplomacy.”

ISTAD Mandate

The functions of the CSIR - International S&T Affairs Directorate (CSIR-ISTAD) inter alia include

• Acting as a nodal point for positioning CSIR in the international S&T arena;
• Facilitating transfer of CSIR knowhow and technologies abroad especially in the neighboring countries and the developing countries for creating solutions for common good;
• Reinforcing S&T base in the developing countries by providing advanced explore/training as well as research and higher education opportunities to their researchers;
• Assisting CSIR in making its scientific & technological knowledgebase internationally competitive through building international scientific and technological networking and collaborations, twinning of institutions and similar other initiatives;
• Assisting CSIR system in scouting for, and pinpointing, the very latest of internationally competitive scientific and technological advances and breakthroughs of relevance to India, that should mold, shape and energize CSIR’s current and future research and development initiatives;
• Building and fortifying bridges of understanding between CSIR and its major overseas science & technology partners to develop synergies and leverage CSIR’s capabilities in core areas of S&T;
• Generating additional resources for CSIR through international project funding;
• Vitalizing CSIR’s inputs through engineered training and retraining of its scientists in core sectors and at the same time helping exploit the enormous trainer potential of the CSIR laboratories to forge and reinforce international partnerships.

ISTAD Activities

CSIR promotes international S&T networking with a belief that sharing of knowledge is like international trade; both parties benefit and the total amount of knowledge exchanged is greater than the sum of knowledge actually exchanged. ISTAD plays a key role to foster and expand CSIR’s international partnerships by initiating new cooperation tools with leading international agencies across the globe, managing / supporting collaborative projects, joint / international workshops and conferences, training programs and facilitating networking through scientific visits of CSIR delegations / scientists abroad and of foreign delegations / researchers to CSIR and its research institutes.

International S&T cooperation activities of ISTAD could be divided into three broad categories, viz i) Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation; ii) International Benchmarking through Awards and Fellowships to International Peers; and iii) Human Resource Capacity Building through international exposure to CSIR scientists and technologists.