Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the meeting of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Society tomorrow morning and all members of the CSIR Society have been invited for the meeting.

The CSIR is a Society under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Ministry of Science & Technology and the Prime Minister is the Society's President.

The Union Minister for Science & Technology, Dr. Jitendra Singh, being the Vice President of CSIR, Nirmala Sitaraman, Union Minister of Finance and Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry will also be present. The CSIR Society comprises eminent scientists, industrialists, and senior officials of scientific ministries. The Society meets annually to review CSIR activities and deliberate on its future programmes.

Briefing the media, about the CSIR Society meeting and achievements of CSIR, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, "CSIR's research efforts are now mainly focussed on green energy technologies, STI interventions to generate employment and raise income levels in rural India."

He said, "Strengthening self-reliance across industrial sectors, facilitating infrastructure developments, and developing critical S&T human resources are also the mandate of CSIR and the R&D conglomerate is adopting Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning platforms for its scientific pursuits."

Singh said, the revitalisation of CSIR as per the CSIR Vision 2030 and aligned to National Vision@2047 is being focussed on making India a scientific powerhouse and self-reliant by becoming a technology provider for the nation.

Carrying forward the vision of the Prime Minister for greater integration of schemes and themes, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, "At present, CSIR has strengthened its engagement with the industry, leading to increased industry partnership and collaboration in CSIR funded projects. In addition to the PPP model, being practised in Energy Theme, few CSIR labs have facilitated sustainable start-ups to promote CSIR technologies pertinent to Agri-bio- nutritech, Specialty Chemicals, Aerospace and Healthcare themes."

The Minister further informed that waste-to-wealth driven technologies of 4M theme and extraction-cum-purification of a wide variety of metals have attracted few start-ups and MSMEs too. Hydrazine Hydrate production plant at Gujarat is the recent proof of CSIR’s technology from Chemicals Theme, reaching new heights and leading to import substitution.

Dr. N. Kalaiselvi, Secretary, DSIR and DG, CSIR in her presentation said that CSIR's activities are carried out through 37 laboratories and 39 outreach centres spread across India. Established in 1942, CSIR completed its 80th year recently, and in its long history, CSIR has made many significant contributions to the Indian industry and society at large. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CSIR laboratories developed numerous technologies to manage the pandemic.