PM Modi to lay foundation stone for country’s first Digital Science Park

The ₹1,500 crore project, which has been conceived as a multidisciplinary cluster-based interactive-innovation zone, will be focused on digital technologies. It will be completed in two years.

A blueprint of the Digital Science Park in Thiruvananthapuram

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for India’s first Digital Science Park coming up at the Technocity campus in the State capital on Tuesday (April 25), marking a milestone in Kerala’s transformation into a knowledge economy.

Located adjacent to the Kerala University of Digital Sciences Innovation and Technology in around 14 acres of land, the ₹1,500 crore Digital Science Park project has been conceived as a multidisciplinary cluster-based interactive-innovation zone focused on digital technologies. The project is to be completed in two years.

Covering an area of 10 lakh sq. ft. in two blocks, the Park will facilitate industry and business units as well as technology start-ups from the domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, electronics, smart hardware, sustainable and smart materials in the initial phase.

An amount of ₹200 crore has been allotted by Government of Kerala and the remaining amount will be generated from other sources including industry partners.

The Park will be equipped with high-end research labs and facilities which will include cleanrooms, material characterisation facility, integrated sensor labs, energy labs, motor and drives labs, RF and wireless testing labs, unconventional computing centre, high-end data centre, robotics labs, electronic design centre, software development labs, informatics and computing labs, and Blockchain and cybersecurity labs. 

The Park will become operational with the launch of its first centre on electronics system design focusing on analog and mixed signal systems, VLSI (very-large-scale integration), AI processors and allied areas. U.K.-based semiconductor and software design company ARM has signed an agreement with Digital University Kerala on the academic, research and start-up-related activities as part of this centre.

MoUs signed

It will have a Centre for Artificial Intelligence with leading multinational  technology company NVIDIA expected to join as a partner. The University of Manchester, University of Oxford and University of Edinburgh have also signed MoUs with DUK to engage in the development of the Digital Science Park.

The park will initially have two buildings with a total area of 2,00,000 sq.ft. The first one in 1,50,000 sq.ft. will have five floors, housing Centre of Excellences (CoEs) including research labs and digital incubator, while the second building will house the administrative and Digital Experience centre.

The Digital Science Park will start its operations from the 10,000 sq.ft space in Kabani located at Technopark Phase IV within the next couple of months.