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IIT Madras partners with Fraunhofer Gesellschaft - 21-Oct-2016

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Fraunhofer Institute IWU Germanyon to establish an Applied Centre for Advanced Automotive Research (CAAR).
 
 The LoI was signed by Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras and Dr.-Ing. Dirk Landgrebe, Chair of Forming and Joining at TU Chemnitz and Head of Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz. Mr. AchimFabig, Consul General of Germany, Ms. AnandiIyer, Director, Fraunhofer OfficeIndia and Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean, ICSR, IIT Madras were also present at the event.

CAAR is envisaged to be a Centre of Excellence focusing on providing research solutions to the automotive industries through focused R&D in association with the talent and capabilities at IIT Madras and the experience and delivery mechanisms developed at the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany.  Some of the areas of interest for CAAR will include frontiers in Light-weighting, Advanced Manufacturing, Emission, NVH, Engineering Design and Novel Materials of interest to the automotive sector. CAAR will be developed in collaboration with Government of India organizations such as the Department of Heavy Industries as well as Industry partners including OEMs, Tier I and Tier II companies as well as associations representing automobiles as well as manufacturing sectors.

Speaking about CAAR,Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean, ICSR, IIT Madras said, "This is a partnership, where we are engaging with Fraunhofer,Germany, Government of India and industries. We want CAAR to be a delivery centre that delivers R&D solutions of excellent level and that too in a timely fashion. We also intend to reach out to the industry to understand their requirements better and CAAR's objective would be to provide solutions to the problems faced by them."

Speaking on the collaboration Ms. AnandiIyer, Director Fraunhofer Office India says “Fraunhofer has been active in India for 7 years and has an impressive collaboration with Indian Industry as well as Government. This collaboration of complementary strengths will further strengthen our engagement with India”

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Landgrebe, Executive Director, Director Fraunhofer IWU said “The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming is at the forefront of the development of cutting edge applied research in the entire range of production technologies. We are excited about this collaboration and look forward to expanding our already extensive engagement with India.”

The LoI signing ceremony was followed by a meeting with the representatives from the industry and the government, where vision of CAAR, industry expectations and the Government's perspective were discussed.

In addition, there was a talk on "Vehicle Light-Weighting" delivered by Dr.-Ing. Dirk Landgrebe. The talk focused on motivation for light-weighting in car manufacturing to achieve significant weight reductions and consequently fuel savings.