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Imperial College launches India Connect Fund

Bengaluru, May 21 (UNI) In a landmark move to deepen Indo-UK scientific cooperation, Imperial College London on Tuesday launched the India Connect Fund, a major new initiative that will support up to 25 joint research projects annually with Indian institutions in frontier areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum science, biotechnology, and clean energy.
The initiative was announced as part of the formal launch of Imperial Global India, the university’s new science and innovation hub in Bengaluru, which aims to act as a central node for collaborative research, academic partnerships, and industrial engagement between India and the UK.
Ranked second globally in the latest QS World University Rankings, Imperial is positioning the India Connect Fund as a flagship programme that will forge high-impact, cross-border research collaborations tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges — from sustainability and climate change to health-tech and semiconductor innovation.
“The India Connect Fund represents a new chapter in Imperial’s longstanding relationship with India,” said Professor Hugh Brady, President of Imperial College London. “By supporting up to 25 joint research projects every year, we are creating a pipeline of scientific collaboration that will bring together the best minds in both countries to solve shared global problems.”
The fund will provide critical seed and development funding to Imperial researchers and their Indian counterparts to initiate and scale collaborative research, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary projects and technologies aligned with the strategic priorities of both governments.
The launch event at Science Gallery Bengaluru drew top names from science, business, and public policy, including Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy, Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Agnikul Cosmos CEO Srinath Ravichandran, and Karnataka Ministers Priyank Kharge and M.C. Sudhakar.
Imperial Global India, set up initially through a service provider pending regulatory clearances, will act as the institutional bridge for these collaborations. Alongside the India Connect Fund, the hub also announced a suite of new initiatives including.
Professor Sanjeev Gupta and Dr Elena Dieckmann, Co-Directors of Imperial Global India, will lead the hub’s operations, aimed at accelerating Imperial’s global strategy Science for Humanity. The Bengaluru office joins Imperial’s growing network of global hubs in Singapore, San Francisco, and Accra.
Imperial’s ties with India are already deep, with collaborations across 400 institutions including the Indian Institute of Science, Christian Medical College Vellore, AIIMS, IIT Bombay, and IIT Delhi. Industry links are also growing, notably with Tata Steel through a joint Centre for Innovation in Sustainable Design and Manufacturing.
As governments in both countries seek to deepen science and innovation ties to drive economic growth and job creation, Imperial’s India Connect Fund stands out as a timely, scalable, and high-impact instrument for realising this shared vision.
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