DAAD SPARC GIANT: Results Announced

The DAAD is happy to share that 12 Indo-German research projects have been selected under the SPARC GIANT programme — a co-funded initiative by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, and the Ministry of Federal Foreign Office, Germany under the Scheme for Promotion Academic Research & Collaboration (SPARC). The programme is jointly implemented by DAAD and IIT Kharagpur.

The selected projects span a wide range of critical areas, including:
• Energy, Sustainability and Climate
• Healthcare and MedTech
• Advanced Manufacturing & Industry 4.0
• Semiconductor and New Materials

These collaborations aim to foster academic excellence, bilateral partnerships and structured internationalisation between Indian and German higher education institutions — contributing to long-term research impact and innovation.

The 12 selected projects are:

1. Global Citizenship and Environmental Stewardship: Driving Water Sustainability and Resilience Through Efficient Conservation and Utilization
   University of Köln and IISc Bangalore
2. Integration of managed aquifer recharge and water-food nexus in higher education
   HTW Dresden and IIT Roorkee
3. Food Sustain – Network for Sustainable crop production under climate change: designing and testing regional climate adaption measures through enhanced ecohydrological modelling
   University of Kiel and IIT Roorkee & Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Bangalore
4. Functional Nanosystems – Towards a Multidisciplinary Indo-German Academic Collaboration and Network
   University of Würzburg and IISER Thiruvananthapuram
5. State of the art in ecological and economical road construction and maintenance – Partnership for a lasting and sustainable transfer of knowledge (PadanaWitra) In short: Innovative and sustainable road construction
   University of Wuppertal and IIT (BHU) Varanasi
6. Deciphering Mycobacterial Respiratory Niches to Target Organelle Dynamics during Infection: A Translational Approach to Develop Novel Therapeutic Intervention
   Julius-Maximilians-University Wuerzburg and IIT Indore
7. AHEAD: Augmented Intelligence in Healthcare for Enhanced Access and Delivery
   TU Munich and IIT Kharagpur
8. MAIHRT: Mathematical AI in Healthcare: Research and Teaching Perspective
   University of Koblenz and NIT Calicut
9. Enabling Green Technology Collaboration between Germany and India
   University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and IIM Ahmedabad
10. Effects of strong correlations in low dimensions: From random fields to tological insulators
    TU Chemnitz and IIT Delhi
11. Berlin-Delhi Network for Research on Sphingolipids in Health and Disease
    Humboldt University of Berlin and JNU New Delhi
12. TEchnologies for sustainable Additive ManUfacturing and Post- processing – TEAM UP
    TU Bergakademie Freiberg and IIT Palakkad

Congratulations to all selected Principal Investigators and partner institutions!