‘Rebooting the Economy through Science, Technology, and Research Translations (RESTART)’ was organised on the occasion of the National Technology Day

‘Rebooting the Economy through Science, Technology, and Research Translations (RESTART)’ was organised on the occasion of the National Technology Day 

• It was a digital conference.
• It was organized by the Technology Development Board (TDB), an autonomous organization of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) along with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organization.
• Issues related to Strengthen medicines and medical technologies, Use of advanced materials for medical instruments, Advanced manufacturing technologies for sustainable future and Global innovation and technology alliance were discussed in the conference.
• Strengthen medicines and medical technologies - The Covid-19 pandemic is a great opportunity for R&D. The crisis has unfolded best medical advancements and innovations, like drug discovery, vaccines, and diagnostic tools, ways to preserve electronic health records etc.  
• Use of advanced materials - Smart materials, special purpose alloys, engineering polymers and blends, graphene, composites, etc. will be the key to revamping the industry’s product lines in the future.
• Advanced manufacturing technologies for sustainable future - Advanced technologies provide avenues to the industry to re-stimulate innovation, sustainability and employment. Covid-19 has forced the Industries to go for digital transformation. The world is moving towards mass customization and mass specialization today, and technology like 3-D printing plays a major role in it.
• Global innovation and technology alliance: Virtual collaboration is the key to connect globally to fight against the common challenge of Covid-19, and collaboration between countries must continue with much vigour.
• To know about National Technology Day read previous issue of DCA CS.
• To tackle pandemics like Covid-19, research needs to quickly switch over from being capital-intensive (business processes or industries that require large amounts of investment to produce a good or service) to knowledge-intensive (reliance on professional knowledge for business services) and should be brought closer to industry.