Division Head: Dr. Sujit Bhattacharya

Team Members: Dr Vipankumar, Dr. Tarakanta Jena, Dr Kasturi Mandal, Ms Pramila Majumdar, dr Shiv Narayan Nishad, Dr Sandhiya Laksmanan, Dr Kanika Malik

This vertical will focus on policy studies and advocacy on science-technology-innovation ecosystem and its translation for strengthening India’s research, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.The research approach will be evidence based drawing from interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary perspective with global, national, regional, sectoral focus. Research areas intend to explore issues of contemporary relevance, new polices of the government and its implications, new models of innovation that brings socio-economic and inclusive perspective within the domains primarilycovering MSME, New and emerging science and technologies, Incubation ecosystems, Startups, Technology assessment and Foresight studies, Scientometrics, and Socio-economic impact studies. One of the key areas of focus will be on CSIR technologies.

The group intends to develop strong linkages with different stakeholders including horizontal linkages with other research verticals of NIScPR; policy think tanks in India and abroad actively involved in the policy framing process on STI, undertake joint research projects with different stakeholders among others. One of the objective also would be to create new opportunities for young researchers to undertake research in this field, develop resources and course material in this area, and undertake specialised training in different sub-domains. Projects will be undertaken with short-medium-long termgoals. The group also interfaces with journals on scientific and industrial research, intellectual property that gives it a strong embedding.

The group sets itself the goal to emerge as a national focal point for technology assessment, foresight studies, and socio-economic impact assessment.