Portuguese and Indian students to do joint research in scientific areas

Lucknow: India and Portugal, an European country made popular mainly by sports and development in some other areas, will do joint research in the field of science and technology. A Memorandum of Understanding has already signed for the purpose.

The two countries will initially spend two million dollars each on the research programmes, director of Roorkee's Indian institute of Technology Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, said on Tuesday.

The MOU was signed in Portugal during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. Chaturvedi who was a memer of the Indian delegation appended his signature on behalf of the country in addition to some other directors.

The pact has been made for the research with Portugal's main funding agency for the purpose, Foundation of Science and Technology (FST). The public sector organisation spends nearly 400 million Euros per year on studies in this field.

The amount spent by the agency accounts for 30 per cent of the funding by the country in different fields.

If the scheme goes well, there will be cooperation between the two countries in other areas like education too. A similar MOU may be signed by non-technical Indian universities for the expansion of the research area.

Association with Portugal is century-old. The first European to sail to India was a Portuguese , Vasco Da Gama. In marine trade the country has done particularly well.

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