Need to scale up R&D, innovation in field of advanced materials, says NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat

Investing in advanced materials innovation is investing in India's future, NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat said on Friday while stressing on the need for scaling up R&D and innovation in the field.

Addressing the 'CII Advanced Materials Summit', Saraswat said the time is now ripe for India to harness indigenous development of advanced materials, thereby reducing imports.

According to him, advanced materials are technology enablers, and revolution in this field will be driven by computational materials, big data, machine learning, multi-scale modelling, and other new technology paradigms.

Saraswat also elaborated on the applications of titanium, graphene,  rare earth and smart materials, a CII statement said.

He also mentioned about the energy applications of advanced materials starting from energy generation, conversion, distribution, storage and their applications in defence and aerospace.

Saraswat  said that emerging new models for advanced materials are based upon combining and putting together the variety of subfields of materials science and many other engineering fields.