to encourage networking and cooperation between scientists of india and germany the german academic exchange service daadrecently organised twoday indogerman scitech forum 2004 at the indian institute of technology delhi iitd a highlevel german delegation consisting of professors and scientists visited india to conduct collaborative workshops with their indian counterparts for the said purpose the workshops dealt with topics like plant biochemistry and biotechnology environmental research and technologies nanotechnology and molecular biology of infectious diseases the forum witnessed lectures on subjects like infectious disease new approaches in research and application and instruments for international cooperation in science and researchthe seminar and workshops saw participation of advance doctoral and postdoctoral students of these areas as well as researchers and academicians while showcasing standards of research capabilities the symposium informed young researchers and academicians about the type and quality of research that is being carried out in germanythe inaugural session saw heimo richter german ambassador to india e l winnacker german research foundation dfg president and professor m g huber vice president daad and a special delegate of the federal government for the promotion of german universities r s sirohi director iit delhi and ulrich podewils director daad on the dais the delegation for the symposium was led by winnacker and huberelaborating the role of dfg winnacker said the institution is responsible for funding projects in all fields of science as we want to encourage scholars from all parts of the world our annual budget for funding scientific and research projects is 13 million euros our government has recently proposed an innovation strategy to identify elite universities in scientific and teaching areas in fact the idea is to create a european funding research organisation which will encourage different scientific activitieswinnacker added we are looking at a situation where countries can cooperate as well as compete the bilateral forum in india will promote cooperation in various areas of science this will encourage joint longterm collaborationswhile concluding the inaugural session podewils remarked cooperation and competition are two sides of the same coin and this is the philosophy of this forumbesides the forum explored possibilities of establishing scientific and research collaborations with indian institutions and industry huber said our aim is to build longterm linkages with indian institutions in areas of sciences and research given the quality of indian students scientists and scholars in germany in the area of research and development we always intended to have scientific collaborations with indian education and research organisations as we have already carried out successful joint researches with almost every iit we are optimistic that we can intensify our collaborations in the coming years tooafter iit delhi the delegation will be visiting university of hyderabad iit madras and iisc banglore