Youth have been showing keen interesting in research and development sector, said Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Shri Y.S.Chowdary in a reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

The Minister said that of late youth have been showing interest to peruse career in this sector because of centre initiative schemes.

The Government has taken up several steps and initiated various programmes and schemes during last few years. During the past few years, the Government has initiated several new Schemes for attracting young talents towards research and development activities in the Country.

Targeted schemes for young researchers, offering attractive fellowships and strengthening research and development infrastructural facilities are some of the measures taken in this direction.

These targeted Programmes/Schemes include Young Scientist project award Scheme, PhD Fellowship and Faculty award Schemes under ‘Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE)’ Programme, Early Career Research Award (ECRA), National Post-doctoral Fellowship (N-PDF) and CSIR-Nehru Post Doctoral Fellowship etc.