35th Annual Report (2022-2023) - ENGLISH

29 PUNE KNOWLEDGE CLUSTER AboutPuneknowledgeCluster Vision Mission KeyAchievements (sinceApril 2022) ¬ ¬ ¬ PKCFocusAreas I. Health The Pune Knowledge Cluster (PKC) is one of the six S&T clusters established by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India under The City Knowledge and Innovation Cluster Initiative (CKIC). PKC aims to create, enable and nurture a collaborative S&T ecosystem for various stakeholders, including Industry, Academia, Government, and Citizens. The Pune Knowledge Cluster (PKC) aims to bring together academia, R & D institutions, and the Industry of Pune and its surrounding areas, to address challenging problems of the region through innovative means, using scientific knowledge and engaging highly skilled human resources. To act as a catalyst to bring together the large talent pool present in Industry, Academia, Government, and non-Governmental organizations of Pune to brainstorm, discuss and identify projects of importance and value to the region and to execute them through collaborative efforts. PKC has raised over Rs. 6 CR in the form of grants and CSR funding from organizations like Rockefeller Foundation, Hindustan Unilever, Cummins Foundation, Lenovo India and BASF Chemicals India, for its various projects. PKC has signedMoUs with 18 organizations including academia, R&D labs, industries, NGOs, and incubation centres. PKC has hosted meetings with the German, Swedish and Norwegian Consulates to foster collaborations in the areas of watermanagement, wastemanagement and energy. PKC's Health vertical aims to build collaborations across academic and industry, NGOs, and Govt departments in generating data critical for public health decisions such as serosurveys, clinical, immunological, and environmental surveillance etc., and creating an epidemiological database with comprehensive health information for Pune and access to real- time data. Projects supported under PKC's health vertical align with the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) and the NationalHealthMission . Projects : PKC has the following ongoing projects under this vertical: COVID-19Genomic Surveillance COVID-19Environmental Surveillance Retrospective clinical study for COVID-19 (Supported by Rockefeller foundation) PKC is hosted by the Inter-University Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA), aUGC-supported government institution inPune. ¬ ¬ ¬ COVID-19 Long Term Immunogenicity Study (Supported by HindustanUnilever) COVID-19Clinical Database Dengue Incidence study Anti-microbial Resistance (AMR) study Partners : Projects are implemented in a collaborative manner between the hospitals, R&D labs and city administration. Key partners include – IISER Pune, CSIR-NCL, BJMC, KEM, Symbiosis, Genepath, Noble Hospital, STRAND life sciences, EPIC-HIM, ARTPARK, PMC, PCMC, NCBS, AshokaUniversity, MUHS Key Future plans : Infectious Disease Platform - Building a platform for multi-institutional collaborations for data-driven policies for infectious diseases. Aligned to the National Action Plan on Climate Change , PKCs Sustainability and Environment vertical currently has the following ongoing projects: Technology-driven Urban Forestry Programs such as ConnecTree and TreeVerse, to preserve and improve tree cover in Pune City. PKC is working to create technology platforms to automate tree census, improve citizen engagement in tree plantation and adoption and build a computational platformfor carbon sink estimation. Carbon Accounting in Campuses: Through this program, PKC encourages academic campuses and Industry premises to account for their Carbon emissions through efficient data collection; and imbibe practises enablingCarbonNeutrality. Sustainable Afforestation Programs : Through these programs, PKC aims to initiate forest landscape restoration projects designed to provide a sustained livelihood by meeting raw material requirements of industry on a short, medium as well as long term basis. PKC currently plans to undertake these programs at three different locations in and aroundPune. Biomasswhitepaper: PKC, alongwith partner organizations is in a process of creation of white paper for increasing biomass on degraded and fallow lands, to augment the green energy demands of the nation. The aim is present this white paper to relevant stakeholders for conversion into a policy document. WaterActionPlanforPuneMetropolitanRegion : Aligned to the National Water Mission , PKC is preparing a sustainable water Management Plan for the Pune Metropolitan Region, comprising of comprehensive information on priority issues, and available resources (human, technical and financial), and mapped solutions. A digital decision-making support system will also be created using time-series and real-time absolute data, GISmaps, and analytics. - For this, a feasibility study has been started for PCMC, in collaborationCPC analytics. · Hydrogen Valley in Pune region: PKC is working towards developing a Hydrogen Cluster in Pune region to foster ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ II. Sustainability&Environment ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬