NEWS: U.S. team in India to explore Media Lab Asia venture

[Frederick Noronha <fred@bytesforall.org>]

India-U.S.-MIT
U.S. team in India to explore Media Lab Asia venture

by Dipesh Satpathy, India Abroad News Service

New Delhi, Jan 22 - A six-member Massachussets Institute of Technology Media
Lab (MITML) team is on a weeklong visit to India to explore avenues for
setting up a lab for Asia in the country on the lines of one in the U.S.
that pioneered collaboration between academia and industry focusing on basic
research without traditional disciplinal barriers.

Although China was also being considered for the project, MIT has informally
agreed to set up Media Lab Asia (MLA), the second such project outside the
USA after Media Lab Europe (MLE), in India, sources in the Ministry of
Information Technology here said. The location of its centre, which is
linked to the presence of top-class academic and research institutes in a
city, is however yet to be decided, they said.

MLA that would address three grand challenges -- education, health and
financial sustainability -- is aimed at making sound education accessible to
all children, providing state-of-the-art public health tools and medical
information to all, and creating a culture of micro-enterprise, in which all
have the knowledge, opportunity and access needed to start and run their own
small businesses.

"Our trip is still exploratory," team member Neil Gershenfeld, who arrived
here Monday morning, told IANS. Others in the team led by MITML's Academic
Director Alex Pentland are Barry Vercoe, Michael Best, Deb Roy and
Vikram Kumar, all from MITML.

The team will visit, Lucknow, Kanpur, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and
meet IT Minister Pramod Mahajan, senior government officials, scientists,
people from the entertainment industry and the financial sector. The plan
also includes meetings with chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and
Maharashtra.

The current visit is a part of the process taken up by a joint Indo-U.S.
task force on the issue to formulate a proposal, which would be submitted to
the government by the first week of next month, sources said. Signing of an
MLA agreement between the two countries is also planned.

The team's tour follows the visit of a three-member Indian team led by S.
Ramakrishnan, senior director in the IT Ministry, to the U.S. last month to
discuss MLA. Other members were Sanjay Dhande, dean, research and
development, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and Prakash
Javdekar, a member of MLA'S screening committee.

Visits have also been planned to IITs in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and
Kolkata, the National Center for Software Technology (NCST) and ICICI Ltd in
Mumbai, Electronics Research and Development Center of India (ER&DCI) in
Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC)
and a private company Geometric Software in Pune, Indian Institute of
Science (IISc) in Bangalore, Bhatkhande School of Music in Lucknow and a few
NGOs that include one floated by IIT Kanpur to popularize electronic gadgets
for the handicapped in rural areas, according to sources.

Sponsors from the IT industry, which would be a prime stakeholder in the
venture, would also be eligible for the intellectual property (IP) generated
at MLA and MLE free of license and royalty fees, the sources added.

MLA would comprise, in addition to a central lab, a number of regional labs,
where companies, non-government organizations (NGOs), students, and
community members could discuss their needs, problems and probable
solutions. MLA would enable India envision tomorrow's technology, products,
concepts and services and provide a competitive edge to address global
markets, senior IT ministry officials said.

The initial goal of the MLA project, the sources said, was to generate $1
billion in direct funding over a period of 10 years. The Indian government
is expected to pay $200 million, much of it as seed money to attract other
investors, and $400 million is to come from private foundations, companies
and individuals. The rest would be procured from governmental bodies like
the World Bank, as per initial plans.

At maturity, the research and development activities of the regional media
centers are expected to generate between $30-60 million annually, and India
has suggested an initial budget of $10 million for the first year of the
project.

MITML, since its inception in 1985, has 40 registered patents to its credit.
Its contributions include advances in electronic paper, new forms of data
hiding, wearable computers, musical jackets and quantum computing. Its
annual budget is about $30-35 million.

-- India Abroad News Service