Opening a new chapter in Indo-US academic cooperation, President A P J Abdul Kalam on Thursday inaugurated an EDUSAT Network of universities from both the countries and urged them to focus on research and development in areas like energy and nanotechnology.

Launching the facility through video-conferencing from the Rashtrapati Bhavan [Images], he said the networking through EDUSAT was the first step towards creating universities that could meet the demands of the knowledge era, born out of convergence of technologies.

"Indian and American universities have decided to work together using EDUSAT connectivity and create a new wave of synergy amongst our educational institutions," Kalam said addressing representatives of ISRO, Department of Science and Technology, Amrita Vishva Vidyapeetham, universities from US, Microsoft Corp, QUALCOMM Inc, and Cadence Design System Inc.

Terming the occasion an important day in the annals of Indo-US academic cooperation, he said, "It is indeed a renewal programme of long standing scientific cooperation between our two countries."

He asked the universities to work on research and development in areas like energy, second green revolution, infrastructure development, ICT, nano science and technology, computer aided design and engineering, virtual reality, computational fluid dynamics and earth quake forecasting, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said.

Kalam said quality faculty, infrastructure, national and international high bandwidth connectivity and availability of knowledge sources were essential for realising excellence in education.

Asserting that the Indo-US co-operation should result in the virtual university system, Kalam said, "The whole purpose of education in a country like India is to develop and enhance the potential of out human resource and progressively transform in into a knowledge society."

He said India's education system should re-align itself at the earliest to meet the needs of the present day challenges and be fully geared to participate in the societal transformation.

"The knowledge connectivity is essential for networking and providing a seamless access between the knowledge creator that is the universities and institutions, the R and D institutions that convert knowledge into products and the knowledge consumer that is the industry and people," he said.