Oxfordshire (UK), Apr 28 : Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh Friday visited the United Kingdom’s premier institution, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and met researchers, including those working on the UK- India iSiS project.
The Minister appreciated Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for coordinating the UK programme of participation in major international facilities.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India has a major collaborative project under the Nano Mission, which enabled Indian researchers to pursue collaborative research with the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and to have access to all of the neutron and muon beamlines of the facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK.
The ISIS accelerator in RAL is one of the few leading research centres to carry out neutron scattering studies in materials research, he said.
The Minister appreciated DST for contributing to the construction cost of a new beamline ZOOM dedicated to small-angle scattering in TS2 of the ISIS facility.
Talking about another breakthrough in the field of Science and Innovation, Dr Jitendra Singh said that he was happy to inform that the Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the LIGO-India project to build an advanced gravitational-wave detector in Maharashtra at an estimated cost of Rs 2,600 crore.
The facility’s construction is expected to be completed by 2030. The observatory will be the third of its kind, made to the exact specifications of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories (LIGO), in Louisiana and Washington in the U.S. LIGO-India will work in tandem with them.
The Minister concluded by saying that he is looking forward to more opportunities for India UK collaboration in sharing of R & D infrastructure to get more from less.
Dr Singh is leading a high-level official Indian delegation of the Ministry of Science & Technology on a 6-day visit to the United Kingdom.
