IIT Madras partners with Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany to establish a Centre for Advanced Automotive Research


Chennai; October 20, 2016
: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), Chennai signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Fraunhofer Institute IWU Germany on October 19, 2016, to establish an Applied Centre for Advanced Automotive Research (CAAR). 

IIT Madras partners with Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany to establish a Centre for Advanced Automotive Research

IIT Madras partners with Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany to establish a Centre for Advanced Automotive Research


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, Germany. Mr. Achim Fabig, Consul General of Germany, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India 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. Anandi Iyer, 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, 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 at IIT Madras Campus. The talk focused on light-weighting in car manufacturing to achieve significant weight reductions and consequently fuel savings.


About IITM (www.iitm.ac.in)

IIT Madras was established in 1959 by the Government of India as an institute of national importance. The activities of the Institute in various fields of Technology and Science are carried out in 16 academic departments and several advanced interdisciplinary Research Academic Centres. There are over 100 well-equipped laboratories in the Institute for teaching and research. The Institute offers 
undergraduate and postgraduate programmes leading to the B.Tech. M.Sc. M.B.A. M.Tech. M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in a variety of specialisations. IITM is recognized world-wide for its intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of engineering and pure science. IITM is a residential institute with more than 550 faculty and 9000 students. Students from 18 countries are enrolled here. The campus is self-contained and is located on a beautiful wooded area of about 250 hectares. It is home to approximately 300 species of trees and plants. IITM fosters an active entrepreneurial culture with strong curricular support and through the IITM Incubation Cell.

The IITM has been ranked as No.1 Engineering Institution in the Country by the National Institutional Ranking Framework, MHRD, Govt. of India - 

About Fraunhofer
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is the leading organization for applied research in Europe. Its research activities are conducted by 67 institutes and research units at locations throughout Germany. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft employs a staff of 24,000, who work with an annual research budget totaling more than 2.1 billion euros. Of this sum, more than 1.8 billion euros is generated through contract research. More than 70 percent of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects.  International collaborations with excellent research partners and innovative companies around the world ensure direct access to regions of the greatest importance to present and future scientific progress and economic development.