Scheme for Promotion of academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC)

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras are collaborating with their counterparts in Germany to develop new materials for green energy solutions.

• This project has been taken up under the Scheme for Promotion of academic and Research Collaboration or SPARC.
• It aims at developing alternative technologies to produce green hydrogen in anticipation of transition to hydrogen-based economy.

Need for and significance of the project:

Conventional methods of generating hydrogen result in a large quantity of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that imposed serious environmental concerns.

This project aims to develop novel low cost electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reactions.

What is SPARC?

It is an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

• The scheme aims at improving the research ecosystem of India’s higher educational institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations between Indian Institutions and the best institutions in the world.
• Under this Scheme, 600 joint research proposals will be awarded for 2 years to facilitate strong research collaboration between Indian research groups with the best in class faculty and renowned research groups in the leading universities of the world, in areas that are at the cutting edge of science or with direct social relevance to the mankind, specifically India.

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is the National Coordinating Institute to implement the SPARC programme.