DESY and numerous Indian research institutes want to work more closely together in the future. To this end, representatives of these institutes have made an agreement during a delegation visit of the German federal government to New Delhi. In the context of the seventh German–Indian governmental consultations and in celebration of 50 years of Indian-German scientific collaboration, a collaboration agreement was signed in the presence of Federal Minister for Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger and her Indian counterpart, Dr Jitendra Singh. The DESY delegation was led by acting director for photon science Franz Kärtner.

The research centre DESY and numerous research groups in India under the current coordination of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bengaluru have built a successful partnership since 2011 in the form of “India@DESY”, which all participating partners want to strengthen. The goal of the newly signed cooperation agreement is to increase the user participation of Indian scientists, institutes, and cooperation projects at DESY’s research light sources, particularly at the high-brilliance X-ray light source PETRA III. Additionally, India has declared interest in preparing a significant participation in DESY’s future project PETRA IV. The agreement particularly specifies a focus on experiments in the areas of energy, nanotechnology, and materials science.

 India@DESY has been developing since a previous agreement was signed regarding research collaboration in 2011 as part of an earlier major diplomatic delegation led by then Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since the signing of the last agreement, India has invested 25 million euro in a beamline for Indian researchers at PETRA III and over 1400 Indian scientists from more than 60 different institutes have performed over 450 experiments, with more than 360 scientific articles being published within the scope of India@DESY. Many of these publications were regarding energy and catalysis research, aimed at helping India make a sustainable transition. The goal is to redevelop energy production and industrial processes in such a way that they are more environmentally friendly and less taxing on resources, in order to solve longstanding ecological and social issues.

The new agreement covers the next two years of cooperation and focuses on increasing Indian user experiments at PETRA III by 15% while preparing for significant participation in PETRA IV. The agreement includes 4.4 million euro for PETRA III and the planning of numerous workshops targeting research advancements and possibilities for Indian collaboration.

With DESY’s PETRA IV on the horizon, the Indian scientific community sees a huge chance to deepen this fruitful relationship. Already on 12-14 March 2024, a high-level DESY delegation held talks with the Indian scientific community at a meeting in Bangalore to expand the India@DESY partnership towards PETRA IV and to set up structures for future collaboration.

Acting Photon Science Director Franz Kärtner says: “India has been a fantastic partner and has made vital contributions to PETRA III’s scientific success. The new page in the India@DESY programme continues that success story for both partners. DESY is currently developing the world’s brightest and highest-performance 3D X-ray microscope through PETRA IV, and India is emerging as one of the world’s top economies propelled by a strong research and innovation effort. The possibilities for collaboration are exceptionally promising, and with this agreement, we can jointly make this happen.”