India's EChO Network To Train Educators, Students In Interdisciplinary Skills

Indian Government has launched a network to encourage cross-disciplinary leadership. Called EChO Network, it will provide a template for cross-disciplinary leadership in India with the specific focus of increasing research, knowledge, and awareness of Indian ecology and the environment. The network was launched by Prof. K Vijay Raghavan, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, in New Delhi.

Prof. Vijay Raghavan said that despite concerted efforts to promote ecological and environmental research, India lacks trained scientists with interdisciplinary skills and collaborative mind-set.

He said that educators and students need to be trained to identify and solve problems in an interdisciplinary manner.

I am convinced this network will inspire an entirely new approach to Indian education and exploration necessary for the post-technological world, said Prof. Vijay Raghavan.

India faces unprecedented threats to its human environmental and ecosystems, solving which requires a confluence of India's strong technological expertise and knowledge of the natural world itself. EChO Network would develop a national network to catalyse a new generation of Indians who can synthesize interdisciplinary concepts and tackle real-world problems in medicine, agriculture, ecology, and technology.

With no precedent for such a network anywhere in the world, EChO Network establishes a new platform to change how science is embedded in our modern society.

Through interactive sessions with citizens, industry, academia, and the government, the Network will identify gaps in knowledge regarding selected topics in human and environmental ecosystems. The program will then train postdoctoral leaders in research and outreach on these topics, while also incorporating current public and private efforts into a national network.

It would then go on to establishing nation-wide awareness in these issues through public discourse and education for citizens, industry, and government with information exchange at all educational levels.

Over time EChO Network intends to create an international distributed institute comprising individuals housed within industry, government, private, and academic sectors, combining their expertise and resources collectively to tackle large scale problems.

The initiative has drawn in partners from Government, industry and academia, with the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Govt. of India steering the program under the guidance of Prof. Shannon Olsson, Director, EChO Network. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hindustan Unilever Limited, RoundGlass, India Climate Collaborative, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) are the founding partners of the EChO Network.

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