Center of Excellence for Underwater Studies

Translating Insights into Action

MRC’s framework for Underwater Domain Awareness has emerged as a unifying model bringing together all relevant stakeholders. The insights garnered from such dialogue are then translated into actionable insights with MRC’s Centers of Underwater Excellence. MRC’s Centers of Underwater Excellence moulds tangible products, strategies, policies and human skills that go into making our blue planet more safe and sustainable as well as better understood and explored.

The five sub-centers under the Center of Excellence

Strategy Center

The Strategy Center keeps track of the R&D and industry requirements to build effective policy frameworks. It employs data driven policy formulation to address stakeholder requirements. The key result area (KRA) for the Strategy Center is to identify gaps in the domestic and regional policies and formulate effective ways forward to build effective maritime governance. Our key performance areas (KPA) are reflected in seamless interactions among policy makers and local communities, and the key indicator of success is the policy intervention for enhanced economic growth for the local industry and long term sustainable maritime activities.

Research Center

The Research Center is a multi-disciplinary organization that provides cutting edge inputs with site specific field experimental R&D to address the core acoustic capacity and capability building. The IOR with its unique tropical littoral waters needs sustained indigenous R&D efforts to overcome the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities. These efforts provide nuanced inputs for the strategy center for effective policy formulation with data driven real time ground understanding. This minimizes the dependence on the technology imports and also enhances strategic capabilities. Home grown science & technology dominance is the emphasis to minimize strategic risks for security and other critical projects. The activities of this center are of relevance to maritime outlook in its widest scope.

Incubation Center

The Incubation Center maps the research outcomes of the Research Center to application specific requirements of stakeholders. Start-ups and industries draw ideas from here and build business plans. The country’s self-reliance on critical strategic issues hinges on this initiative. Start-ups which are known for their agility to build high-tech solutions along with the UDA framework offer significant possibilities. The effective eco-system provided by this incubation center nurtures the talent pool and provides innovative directions to channelize efforts towards nation building.

Skilling Center

The Skilling Center ensures that professionals and practitioners from stakeholders, including partner countries, can translate the nuances of the UDA framework and apply them effectively in their operations and strategic planning. This not only makes practitioners more scientific and effective in their routine operations but also promotes building national infrastructure and enables seamless collaboration across stakeholders. This facility further adds diplomatic leverage in the pursuit of larger maritime objectives.

Academic Center

The Academic Center builds academic programs along with project based learning to prepare the next generation of students and professionals to attain higher qualifications to appropriately take forward the UDA framework. The professional enhancement is a critical aspect to bring regional cooperation. The young generation and the experienced professionals sitting together and working on regional issues need no elaboration for its impact on regional cooperation. These centers are the hotbed of innovations and ideas for effective progress and seamless interactions at all levels of decision making.