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], leveraging academic rigour of institute in  a particular domain for benefit of ISRO [S-NAP], motivating Academicians to tackle challenging problems [ISRO Chairs] and raising the overall research aptitude of an institute in space domain [RAC-S]