ISRO encourages research activities at Academia. Interested institutions can be engaged with ISRO centres for carrying out R&D activities in the ISRO focussed areas. The following kinds of engagement is possible for carrying out joint research.

1. Sponsored Research: ISRO publishes focussed areas for research in the space domain and seek proposals from qualified academic institutions for joint research. PI will be identified by the institution, where as Co-PI will be joining from ISRO for carrying out the projects. The project including timeline and budget will be mutually agreed upon and reviewed thoroughly by Joint Management Committees / technical committees with in ISRO centres, before the project is approved. The approved amount shall be released in phases subject to meeting the conditions of the MOU.
2. ISRO cells: ISRO also established cells at various premier engineering institutions for carrying out Joint research. Space Technology Cells (STC) are instituted at IITs’ and IISc for advanced research with the respective institution. Space Technology Innovation Centre(STIC) at NITs in various regions to focus on entrepreneurial oriented projects and Regional Academia Centres for Space (RAC-S) are instituted at NITs in the different regions to encourage the collaborative projects in space in that region. In additional various centre of excellences, Innovation centres and space science centres are also instituted to promote the research in space.

Recognising the need for a broader academic interface with institutions across the country, a series of capacity building initiatives have been taken up to further strengthen the involvement of academia for ISRO programmes. These initiatives include:

• Sponsored Research (RESPOND)
• Regional Academic Centres for Space [RAC-S]
• Space Technology Incubation Centres [S-TICs]
• Space Technology Cells [STC]
• Space Innovation Centre
• ISRO Chairs
• Centre of Excellence on Advanced Mechanics of Materials
• Satish Dhawan Centre for Space Science
• Centre for Nano Science & Engineering (CeNSE)

Each of the above programmes is uniquely designed to achieve a specific objective, such as encouraging students towards entrepreneurship [S-TIC], motivating Academicians to tackle challenging problems [ISRO Chairs] and raising the overall research aptitude of an institute in space domain [RAC-S].