INDUSTRY PARTNER OFFERINGS & BENEFITS

Industry partnership deliverables & benefits – highlights

Key deliverables

• Early access to the latest energy research findings & developments
• Participation in the annual Energy Consortium conference
• Mutually selected R&D projects
• Impact KPIs defined & measured for each project

Benefits for industry partners

• Engagement in an interdisciplinary research ecosystem for energy research across the multiple Centers of Excellence at IIT Madras — brainstorm real-world problems, define research priorities and learn hands on from latest developments in the domain
• De-risk your R&D efforts with an academic partner — Feasibility stage R&D (TRL 1-3), scale up validations (TRL 4-6) and pilot demonstrations (TRL 7-9)
• Access to a large talent pool of energy researchers and deep-tech entrepreneurs at IITM — acts as an RoI multiplier for your R&D spend
• Establish long term impactful collaboration with academic institutions, peer industry partners and policy leaders on a global stage
• Channelize Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds towards energy research and technology at an Institute of Eminence
• Industry support of the IITM Energy Consortium will unlock additional funding support from the government.

Types of partnerships

The IITM EC offers two tiers of industry collaboration.

• Founding partners: $100K for 3 years
• Collaborating partners: $50K (annually)

The primary advantage of founding membership is being advisory board members with ability to shape and influence the consortium as a whole and to have the ability to choose certain areas for grand challenges over others.

Other differentiating benefits would exist including

• Level and nature of access to broader research work at IITM
• Ability to find representation in external forums such as with government agencies that are hosted by IITM
• Engagement level at consortium symposia, webinars and annual summit.
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Specific avenues of engagement for partners

1. Collaborative Research Projects: These projects are collaborative research projects, consultancy, industry-academic partnerships.
2. Visiting appointments and advisory: COMPANY employees and IITM faculty can be invited by the Other Party for research interaction visits and/or sabbaticals to the research laboratories of the Other Party for detailed discussions. Such visits may range from a few days to a few months. COMPANY employees and IIT faculty can also participate on each other’s committees and Boards.
3. Employee Continuing Education: Employees of COMPANY can enrol in the various degree programs, such as M. Tech., M.S. and Ph.D., which are offered by the Institute after securing admission through due process into the desired programs.
4. Short Term Training Programs: IITM and COMPANY personnel can jointly or individually offer short term training programs lasting between one to four weeks to benefit students of IITM as well as the employees of Company on topics of mutual interest.
5. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and grants programs: COMPANY and IITM may come together to engage in CSR activities as per COMPANY CSR policy. COMPANY may also choose to make grants to support faculty research or to support students on scholarships and fellowships.
6. Research Park and Incubation Cell: COMPANY may take up space in the IIT Madras Research Park in order to leverage the broader IIT Madras ecosystem and work with the start-up companies collocated in the IITM Incubation Cell.
7. Campus Recruitment: This mode of interaction includes recruitment of the graduates of IIT Madras by the COMPANY. Students of IITM can be taken for full time employment or as interns by the COMPANY. This activity shall be facilitated by the Placement Office, IIT Madras

Modus operandi of projects

Consortium work and outcomes will be shared with all members. Confidential information as specified by any founding members will not be shared with other members, unless explicitly approved for such use. Specific projects defined by founding members will be taken up by the specific center(s) of excellence at IITM and an NDA will be signed at commencement of work. 

Any strategic interest of a particular founding member will be restricted from dissemination. However, it would also be advisable for the members to collectively define grand challenge problems for the consortium to work on.  Grand challenges will be large problem statements on topics such as and as examples – hydrogen economy, carbon sequestration and utilization, net zero approach, affordable 100% renewable energy solutions, etc. Projects will constitute specific activities that will be run aligned to the grand challenges. Following kinds of projects are imagined:  

1. a ‘strategic action team’ constituting few faculty and consortium members who will develop think tank reports
2. seed funded projects
1. problem statements to be shared by members, downselected to a few by industry advisory board, proposals solicited from faculty & students, screened by advisory board sub-committee and commissioned
2. pilot demonstration feasibility studies that will see few members directly participate with a faculty team. 
3. Both these paths can separately be further evolved into full scale projects with participation of interested partner(s) and in those cases specific NDAs would be developed. Also funding for these at and beyond that point will be from outside consortium money (and can be raised from the government).
3. Global research fellows who will be recruited to run complex and large research projects aligned to the grand challenges. They will work in tandem with faculty PIs and co-PIs. Unlike the above two, they are to be funded from government money.

IP strategy

• Work conducted within the consortium will mostly entail pre-competitive work. It will be shared with all members.
• Where a particular area is of interest to a member, they would individually be able to take it forward directly with IITM and have it developed through a standalone project. IP will therefore get discussed on a ‘project’ basis between IITM and partners beyond that point.
• Existing IP related rules and guidelines of IITM will be followed and we can gladly share those across.

Support & engagement from government of india for the consortium

The government is currently funding IITM under the Institute of Eminence grant. As an Institute of Eminence, IIT Madras, has started multiple research initiatives, including about 21 clusters where we have internally funded each of these projects to the tune of half a million dollars (~3.8 crores INR) so that they can pursue research in multiple areas. One of those areas is Energy and it has seven research initiatives that span the whole spectrum of energy generation, storage, conversion and distribution. The IIT Madras Energy Consortium brings them all together as one large effort.  

Additional avenues for govt funding exist that the faculty PI are soliciting through individual proposals. The consortium has active participation from more than 50 IIT Madras faculty, with significant technology expertise and demonstrated contributions on the world stage. In addition, we have over 250 postgraduate students (PhD and MS) and about 20-30 post-doctoral fellows working in various domains related to energy research. 

In recent times, consortium-oriented grants have been floated by SERB and the Energy Consortium can decide to pitch to such funded support in future.

Joining the IITM EC – partnership participation procedure

• The first step for Energy consortium participation is through submission of the Expression of Interest letter on company letterhead to The Energy Consortium, Office of Global Engagement, IIT Madras, Chennai 600036, Tamil Nadu
• Industry partners will choose to become founding members with a three year term commitment and corresponding total membership fee of US$100,000 or associate members with a one year term commitment and corresponding total membership fee of US $50,000.
• The second step is formally executing the Memorandum of Understanding. This will be executed as a bipartite document between the interested member company and IIT Madras.