On the occasion of the official visit of India’s President Shri Pranab Mukherjee to Russia, Moscow State University hosted a roundtable meeting for rectors/presidents of the two countries’ leading universities on 8 May 2015 to discuss the prospects of cooperation between the higher education institutions. A number of cooperation agreements were signed at the event, including one about creation of the first Association (Network) of Russian and Indian Universities.
At a pivotal moment of the meeting, the Russian Science Foundation and India’s Ministry of Science and Technology signed an agreement defining coordinated effort to launch a competition to finance research initiatives of international research teams.
The competition will be announced in September this year latest. The amount of funding per grant as provided by RSF will range between RUB 4 and 6 mn, while the Indian Ministry will allocate up to INR 6 mn annually. The funding will be awarded for basic and exploratory research in branches of natural and technical science. Applications will be collected over a period of two months, and their review by experts will take not more than another four months.
The total funding generated by the joint program between the years 2015 and 2019 will amount to 600 mn in roubles and rupees, respectively.
