This year, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology is celebrating Silver Jubilee Year. It was established in 24th of July 1997. During these 25 years, it has recorded consistent improvement in its academic and research activity which is evident from the student progression and research activities. Department has well equipped teaching and research laboratories and in-house sophisticated instrument facility. Each faculty has separate research laboratories to carry out their research activities.
Department offers PhD in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, MSc in molecular biology and Biotechnology and Integrated MSc in Life Sciences. The syllabus of these courses has been constantly updated with the recent trends and to meet the needs of major stakeholders. The updated curriculum contains mini/major projects which is supplementing theoretical knowledge with practical experience. These projects enable them to understand and learn science and it also give an opportunity to work in a team. The practical experience they gained enable them to do independent research as well. We encourage our students to appear for the National Level test and if required we arrange for remedial classes. Over the years the percentage of students qualifying these National Test is increasing. As a result of these many of our students are admitted to reputed research institutes and universities of the country and abroad for higher studies. PhD scholars also go for post doc in reputed institutes of abroad after completing their thesis, due to the quality of publications from their research work. The Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility (BIF) established in 2007 under the Biotechnology Information System Network (BTISnet) scheme of the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India is providing innovation in biology teaching through Bioinformatics. The goal of this facility is to expose students and researchers to the use of bioinformatics in solving hard core biological problems and have been fetching fruitful results. Department is also housing the ONGC Centre for Petroleum Biotechnology which is a Industry-Academica collaborative centre. Objective of the centre is to conduct research in the field of petroleum biotechnology and develop skilled human resource and also to impart training in petroleum biotechnology to ONGC.
We also encourage students to organize events so that they get involved in activities of social relevance. We are confident that our current curriculum has enabled the overall development of budding scientist to come up with scientific problems and to solve them using modern biotechnological approaches.
The curriculum is taught by a distinguished faculty combining academic excellence and real-world experience with dedication and commitment. In addition to their teaching assignment, research in the areas of Microbial, Plant, Animal and Environmental Biotechnology, Disease Biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Omics in Biology is being carried out. Their research projects are being funded by funding agencies such as DBT, DST, ICMR, UGC, CSIR etc.
We are encouraged to see that reputed pharmaceutical companies of the country are recruiting our students for their R&D works. This testify that our updated curriculum is meeting requirement of the pharmaceutical companies.
I hope with sincere efforts by the faculty members and students, this department will be one of the leading departments in the field of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and contribute in generating trained manpower capable of taking leading roles in pharmaceutical industries, academia, bio-entrepreneurship and related areas.
(R. Doley)