Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today urged Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad to set up a C-DAC regional centre at Bhubaneswar.

“I would request for setting up of a C-DAC regional centre at Bhubaneswar so as to accelerate research in high-performance computing and data analytics and its application in industries and governance in Odisha,” wrote Patnaik in a letter addressed to Prasad.

Patnaik said establishment of a C-DAC regional centre at Bhubaneswar would enable faculty, Ph D scholars and students to solve problems of State and national importance.

“Odisha being a coastal State and prone to cyclone, application of high-performance computing can particularly help in weather forecasting and disaster management,” he added while pointing out that presently Kolkata has the only regional centre of C-DAC in the eastern part of the country.

To emphasize his point further, the Chief Minister drew the attention of the Union Minister to Odisha making steady progress in the field of Electronics and Information & Communication Technology.

“In recent years, many prominent national level educational institutions like IIT, IIM, AIIMS, NISER, USER, Institute of Physics, Institute of Mathematics, IMMT and NIT have started functioning in Odisha and many other reputed institutions like BITS have also evinced interest to open their branches in the State,” he added.

Besides, one C-DAC Centre of Excellence has already been set up in VSS University of Technology, Burla and the  State government is also actively considering establishment of such high-performance computing and deep learning C-DAC Centres in other State government technical universities and engineering colleges, he stated.