London (PTI): Professor Gerard Parr, an IT expert at the University of Ulster, is to co-lead a high-profile team of the UK and Indian scientists in a 9.2 million pounds research project to reap the advantages of digital economy.

The UK-India consortium is led by Professor Parr, Chair of Telecommunications Engineering at Ulster, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Chennai, and Professor Nader Azarmi of BT Innovate, at Adastral Park UK.

Welcoming the funding success, Parr said, "Our joint India-UK team have worked extremely hard over the past two years. We have put together a consortium of international reputation and capability that will conduct leading research in telecommunications engineering and associated systems.

"Its aim is to make a step-change difference to the encouragement of value-added India-UK collaboration and to provide training opportunities for the next generation of research engineers and scientists dealing with applications, communications protocols and hardware.

The five-year collaboration between the UK and Indian Governments, universities and information and communication technology specialists in both countries will work to develop Next Generation Telecommunications Networks and ICT services and applications in the two countries, along with work on wireless sensor networks which could aid healthcare and early warning weather systems in rural areas.

The University of Ulster is the lead institution in a UK-India consortium of nine research-leading UK universities and five Research Institutes in India and companies in both countries which will conduct research through a new Centre of Excellence – the India UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services.

The IU-ATC will provide an internationally leading resource of expertise and infrastructure to develop, at low financial risk and exposure, the research capacity of indigenous Indian companies in the ICT Engineering and Software sector.

The other UK universities in the consortium are Surrey, University College London, Southampton, Bristol, St Andrews, Lancaster, Cambridge and Queen Mary. The Indian Research Institutes taking part are from Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur besides IISc Bangalore and IIT Chennai, which is the lead Indian institute.

"The funding will support an exciting research and innovation programme for the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services which will put in place the support infrastructure to explore solutions that will facilitate, develop, enable and protect the Digital Economy of both countries," Parr added.