India And France Strengthen Ties for Health Technology

In an important milestone in S&T Cooperation between India and France an MoU was signed yesterday between CSIR and Institut Pasteur with a scope for cooperation in health research. CSIR and Institut Pasteur would be jointly researching and focusing on emerging and remerging infectious diseases and inherited disorders and enable delivery of effective and affordable healthcare solutions not only for the people of India and France but for the global good. The MoU provides for developing potential scientific and technological cooperation and networking in advanced and emerging areas of Human Health between scientists and institutes/laboratories of CSIR and Institut Pasteur and its international network.

Dr. Shekhar C. Mande, DG, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, India and Professor Stewart Cole, President Institut Pasteur, France signed the MoU on behalf of their respective organizations. H.E. Mr Emmanuel Lenain, Ambassador of France to India commended this effort and underscored its importance and impact in the overall India-France S&T relations. H.E. Ambassador of India to France and the Embassy of India, represented by Deputy Chief of Mission, Dr. Praphullachandra Sharma, extended their full support to this collaboration which is focused on addressing the issues in global human health – a need of the hour particularly in the age of the pandemic. The Ministry of External Affairs representatives from India and France supported the initiative and extended full support to the MoU.

The path ahead for execution of collaboration activities under the MoU was presented by Dr. Vinay K. Nandicoori, Director CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), Hyderabad in discussion with Prof. Christophe d’Enfert, Sr. Executive Scientific Vice-President, Scientific Affairs Department, Institut Pasteur. Emphasising the commonalities of interest and expertize of the two institutions, Dr. Claire GIRY, Director General for Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, France appreciated the initiative and extended her full support to it.

The senior leadership in the health care domain from CSIR and Pasteur, 14-member delegation from CSIR and DST and 15-member delegation from Institut Pasteur and over 10 representatives from the Indian and French Missions and Indian External Affairs ministry attended the meeting (Hybrid on Indian side).

Scientists recalled initiation of this collaboration linkage in 2019 and the follow up interactions in the joint workshop in 2020. They appreciated the intellectual young enthusiastic workforce on both sides and indicated enormous opportunities for working together for identifying and developing new mechanisms and models, in Cell Biology, Virology, Vaccine development, Infectious diseases, and working on Computational Biology and Human Evolutionary Genetics studies. CSIR looks forward to working very closely with Institut Pasteur colleagues for fruitful collaborations towards delivering greater benefits to mankind.

 (Left to right: Dr. Vinay Nandicoori, Director CSIR-CCMB; Dr. S.C. Mande, DG, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR; Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Chief Scientist and Head International CSIR; Mr. S.K. Varshney, Chief Scientist and Head International DST; Dr. Nicolas Gherardi, Deputy Counsellor for Education, Science and Culture, Embassy of France in India)