The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) under the ministry of science and technology on September 26, 203 celebrated its 71st foundation day. The concerned minister, S.Jaipal Reddy, who chaired the occasion here in New Delhi complimented the CSIR leadership and Scientists for maintaining CSIR's position in first 100 organizations of the world - to be precise at the 81st position amongst 2740 institutions worldwide. He gave its credit to the able leadership and motivation of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. On this occasion Shri Reddy also gave away different category of CSIR Awards and said that he see future leaders of Indian science in the CSIR Young Scientist Awardees. He also called call upon them to perform well in times to come and help our country achieve S&T leadership.

The Minister emphasized that real value in a knowledge economy, could only be derived from invention and innovation. He said we thus need to invent and innovate more and more and also engage all the stakeholders in doing so. The role of "Responsible Innovation" should be understood in our Country in letter and spirit. It requires building up of an ecosystem of researchers, entrepreneurs and enabling institutions. He said our Country is marching towards that and I see CSIR playing a significant role through its constituent Laboratories - an "Innovation System" in their own right.

Reddy said as one of the leaders in innovation in the country, CSIR has greatly energized the National Innovation System through its contributions in the past seven decades. The spectrum of such contributions is quite wide - from import substitution to development of specific industry segments, from strategic capacity creation in some niche segments to marching towards global leadership. He expressed happiness on CSIR's act in increasingly carving out global Science and Technology niches and moving further in enabling the National Innovation System in a strategic manner. He said the setting up of CSIR-Fourth Paradigm Institute (CSIR-4PI) is a testimony to that.

The Minister said in the current decade of Innovation, as declared by our Government, CSIR has pursued several innovative activities. Conceptualization of the eHealth Center (eHc) and making it operational by this very institute of CSIR is one among those. He felt a proud to have launched the first eHealth Center in November 2012. Housed in an unused shipping container, it is a unique platform for pursuing the fourth paradigm of science, the data-intensive discovery, while also providing affordable healthcare services to people in need in rural settings, he added. He also expressed happiness on CSIR setting up the Innovation Complexes and its partnership with National Innovation Council (NInC) to strengthen our MSME clusters - he said these steps have now started showing results.

Shri Reddy said CSIR is pursuing cutting edge science and is advancing knowledge frontiers. The scientific staff of CSIR only constitute about 3-4% of India's scientific manpower but they contribute to 11% of India's scientific outputs. CSIR is granted 90% of US patents granted to any Indian publicly funded R&D organization and has a wide portfolio of patents in its armory. 13.86% of its patents are licensed, a number which is above the global average. Amongst its peers in publicly funded research organizations in the world, CSIR is a leader in terms of filing and securing patents worldwide. He said CSIR has won the prestigious National Intellectual Property Award 2013, as top R&D institution in Patent. Also, the recognition of CSIR scientists by National Academies is of very high order. In the year 2013, two CSIR scientists received Infosys Foundation Award, out of the seven awarded.

The minister pointed that we should not forget that India still lives in villages. People at the base of economic pyramid need our help to enhance their income and remove drudgery. Expressing satisfaction on that CSIR-800 programme he said we need to develop more and more enabling technologies, innovative products and services for people at the base of the economic pyramid.

Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences and Vice President, CSIR, Shri S. Jaipal Reddy today, on the occasion of CSIR's 71st Foundation Day, gave away different category of CSIR Awards for year 2012 & 2013 here in New Delhi. These awards include The CSIR Young Scientist Award 2013, G.N.Ramchandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences & Technology , CSIR Technology Award 2013 and CSIR Innovation Awards for 2012.

The The CSIR Young Scientist Award 2013 was given in the areas of Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, Engineering Sciences and Physical Sciences (including instrumentation).

The Biological Sciences Award for 2013 was given to D. Arun Kumar Trivedi of CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute,Lucknow for his outstanding contribution towards identification of novel targets of E3 ubiquitin ligases that regulate tumorigenesis.