Thaindian News

Kolkata, Sep 3 (IANS) India is the third largest shareholder in the Germany-based Facility for Anti-Proton and Heavy Ion Research (FAIR), a unique international accelerator facility for research with antiprotons and ions, Bose Institute director Sibaji Raha said.

Bridging the gap between academia and industry, India recently became one of the founder members of FAIR.

“Not only are we one of the founders but we are the third largest shareholder in FAIR which is supposed to be run as a company,” said Raha.

The Kolkata-based Bose Institute houses the Indo-FAIR Co-ordination Centre(IFCC) - a small unit that will oversee Indian commitment to FAIR.

Lauding the efforts of India’s industrial sector in contributing to the FAIR-India project, he said: “Indian industry has risen to the occasion by manufacturing components such as super conducting magnets for the FAIR project. ECIL has been identified as one of the providers.”

Meanwhile, the US-based Fermilab and the Indian institutions such as the departments of atomic energy and science and technology have been jointly developing a unique collaboration in particle physics and accelerators.

“This collaboration will enable building a next generation accelerator complex titled Project X at Fermilab. More than 10 Indian universities are participating and two high intensity proton accelerators will be constructed in India too,” said Shekhar Mishra, the international collaboration co-ordinator of Project X.

Indian institutions and Fermilab are also jointly focusing on neutrino experiments which will draw Indian students.

“We are expecting around 20 Indian Phd students in the next 3 years,” said Mishra.

India which has an observer status in CERN, Geneva, has also contributed significantly to the project responsible for the recent discovery of Higgs boson.

“The device, the Large Hadron Collider, which generated the Higgs boson has components manufactured in India by companies like BHEL AND ECIL,” said CERN scientist Archana Sharma.