Hyderabad, April 28 : Hyderabad has been consolidating its position as the most dynamic scientific centres in Asia and globally, said Telangana's Information and Technology Minister K. T. Rama Rao on Thursday. Inaugurating Thermo Fisher Scientific's India Engineering Centre (IEC), he noted Hyderabad is also known as a cradle of life sciences research and development, a great hub for talent in various disciplines and a catalyst of intersection of life sciences and technology. The new R&D and engineering facility of Thermo Fisher has come with the annual planned R&D investment of approximately $15 million and will create employment of over 450 people, throughout the value chain. Spread across 42,000 square feet, this facility is specifically curated to support new product development and product optimisation of laboratory equipments for laboratory and analytical solutions at Thermo Fisher's global sites. In addition to life sciences and pharmaceuticals, IEC will focus on product development, analytical instruments for soil and water analysis, laboratory equipment and instruments for lithium ion batteries. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which has more than 100 locations worldwide, invests more than $1.4 billion annually in R&D. KTR, as the minister is popularly known, said he was delighted that Thermo Fisher choose Hyderabad for IEC which reinforces Hyderabad's research and innovation prowess. The minister noted that Hyderabad is one of the most-preferred locations to set up GCCs in general and in life sciences and healthcare in particular. He said marquee players like Novartis, Medtronic, Providence, Nektar Therapeutics, Intel, Micron, One Plus, Oppo and AMD have set up their GCCs in Hyderabad. KTR said a recent study by fDi Benchmark points out that Hyderabad is the most competitive location for life sciences and R&D functions compared with life sciences clusters across the world. "We have consistently tried to retain this momentum by establishing centre specific clusters like Genome Valley which has become a major innovation and life sciences cluster in Asia," he said. The minister claimed that Hyderabad not just offers competitive industrial infrastructure but a comprehensive ecosystem for life sciences including plug and play labs, shared scientific infrastructure, testing facilities access to CROs and highly skilled talent pool "Hyderabad is where biology meets technology, life sciences meets data sciences, north of India meets south of India. That's the beauty of Hyderabad. We are a melting point. This exciting point of intersection Ais what makes us special," he said. Tony Acciarito, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Thermo Fisher Scientific noted that Hyderabad city is a hotspot for talent acquisition, home to world-renowned R&D institutes, and is one of India's fastest-growing engineering, life sciences and IT knowledge hubs. "The expansion of the facility is a testament to Thermo Fisher's unwavering commitment to supporting change by accelerating innovation, improving time to market for new products," he said. Amit Chopra, Managing Director, India and South Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific, said that the new infrastructure at Hyderabad is uniquely placed to drive technological advances and excellence in developing new products and solutions that strengthen our offering and leadership position in the research, industrial and clinical market. /IANS