India and China Scientific Collaborations at Grass-Root Level: A New Era

COVID-19 marks one of the most challenging year in human history with unprecedented globalization challenges. However, there is a silver lining in the midst of such challenges in that it invigorated intensive and unlimited academic cooperation at grass-roots level between the world’s two most ancient civilizations, India and China. It was a year of 1st Indo-China Research Webinar Series featuring over 5000 participants, 16 technical sessions and 10 Special Guests. Under normal circumstances, this clearly would not be possible. After all, generally, it would have required at least a year of detailed planning coupled with significant funding. The success of the series stood on the foundation of the past several years of scientific collaborations. This chapter describes this scientific cooperation in terms of youth exchange (2-way) between outstanding universities from both countries. In addition, the impact of such cooperation in terms of Joint International Research Awards has also been presented. Still, what is presented here is still only the tip of iceberg of the impact of scientific cooperation between the youth of both countries in past few years. Undoubtedly, a great deal still needs to be done to further deepen relations in people to people exchange at the scientific level between both countries, especially in seeking solutions to scientific issues of mutual interest, especially in the global existential challenges of climate change and the economic future of sustainable infrastructure development for humanity.