In December 2010 the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) was opened at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras in the southern Indian city of Chennai. The IGCS is a collaboration between IIT Madras and a group of German universities under the leadership of the RWTH Aachen. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, it brings together German and Indian cutting-edge research in the fields of water, energy, waste management and land use in order to find solutions to Asia’s pressing environmental problems.
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is funding four guest lectureships at the IGCS in the fields of power engineering, hydrogeography, waste management and water management. The visiting professors took up their posts in February 2011. There will also be scholarships for researchers and PhD students in both India and Germany. The funding comes from a programme called “A New Passage to India”, an initiative that aims to improve young German scientists’ knowledge about India. The Indian researchers at the IGCS intend to start on their own doorstep – and calculate the ecological footprint of the IIT campus. A biodiversity report has shown that about 50 species of butterfly, 51 bird species and 12 kinds of mammal live on campus, including roughly 130 macaques. So it’s a very appropriate place for sustainability research.////
