CDIF’s collaboration with Indian institutions under the SPARC scheme

Feb 05, 2026

The joint project with IIT Roorkee and NIT Warangal fosters international cooperation for research and innovation

CDIF’s collaboration with Indian institutions under the SPARC scheme

Last month, CDIF Professors Alexandre Presas and David Valentín co-hosted the "Advanced turbine diagnostics: CFD, smart sensors and AI/ML" workshop, together with Prof. Anant Kumar Rai and Prof. Chandra Shekhar Pant, at National Institute of Technology Warangal (India).

As part of the same SPARC initiative, Prof. Presas gave a Keynote Session at the International Conference on Thermal Sciences and Sustainable Energy (ICTSE), where over 200 research papers on renewable energy, fluid mechanics and heat transfer were presented. In addition, as an invited lecturer, Prof. Valentín presented an advanced simulation on a Pelton nozzle and provided inputs on how to optimise its design.

Prof. Presas also visited Indian Institute of Technology Roorke last December, where he discussed institutional collaboration frameworks with the Dean at the Office of International Relations.

Thanks to Prof. Vimal Chandra Srivastava, Prof. Chandra Shekhar Pant and Prof. Anant Kumar Rai for their invitations and insightful contributions.

These visits and their activities conclude the final stages of the SPARC joint project, where CDIF, IIT Roorkee and NIT Warangal have cooperated to foster advances in hydropower research and innovation. The project has focused on a comprehensive examination and health monitoring of hydropower turbines. Through numerical simulation, erosion and cavitation patterns have been analysed under diverse conditions.

Promoting mobility

This two-year-long cooperation project, funded by the Ministry of Education of the Government of India, has successfully promoted mobility of international students and researchers between its partner institutions. For instance, Navam Shrivastava (NIT Warangal) and Rahul Vishwakarma (IIT Roorkee) have been visiting students at CDIF in Barcelona. It is also through SPARC that current postdoctoral researcher at CDIF PhD. Bhushan Ravindra Rode has come in contact with the CDIF team and joined it.

We look forward to taking part in more joint projects like SPARC to foster cooperation and knowledge exchange to work towards shared goals in hydropower and the future of renewable energies.