MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Director's Report 2003

The Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) was established in the year 2001. It was set up on the recommendation of the Vision Group on Biotechnology, an advisory body to the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri. S. M. Krishna. The Vision Group includes representation from academia, industry and government, each recognizing the strengths of other sectors and the value of working together. The same is the case with IBAB's Governing Body, which has distinguished members from all the three sectors. Consequently, all three have rallied to help us jump-start our courses, while the industry is providing support in teaching as well as internships and placements. The State Government has played a proactive role by providing core funding and visibility. The ICICI Bank has contributed much needed funds to help build up our laboratories.

The first year in IBAB's life has been an exciting and challenging time. A Post Graduate Diploma programme in bioinformatics was initiated in February 2002. We selected 30 students from among 1500 applicants, after a national-level selection. The students were not quite sure what they would be learning or who was going to teach them. In view of the acute shortage of teachers who could provide a true flavour of the excitement in modern biology, we have preferred to rely on actual practitioners of the various 'arts'. Thus, cellular, molecular and structural biology modules were taught by faculty from the Indian Institute of Science, structural bioinformatics and signal transduction by those from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, modern biology lab techniques by scientists from the Centre for Human Genetics, industrial biotechnology and intellectual property rights issues by scientists from Biocon India and drug design by a leading scientist from AstraZeneca, to name a few. The support of the scientific and technical community in Bangalore (documented elsewhere in this site) has been overwhelming. We and our students are very grateful to them. An on-the-job internship experience is an integral part of the program at IBAB and we succeeded in placing all the students at leading academic and industrial institutions all over the country. Going by current indications, most students will find suitable placements in industry while a few wish to pursue research careers in academia.

The response to the second round of admissions was as overwhelming as the first - an irrefutable proof of the success of the course. 34 young men and women with diverse educational backgrounds have joined this January, the start of the course having been advanced by two months. The heartening feature of the 2003-2004 class is the large number of women who successfully competed and joined the course this year, as also students with engineering background.

While the major activity during the past one year has been the planning and running of the postgraduate course in bioinformatics, I would also like to mention our other mandates. Three short-term courses have been conducted, and three others are in the pipeline. On the 'incubation of entrepreneurs' front, one entrepreneur has signed up, and discussions are on with two others. IBAB premises also host the Centre for Human Genetics, a state-of- the-art facility carrying out research in this very important area. With the recruitment of two young faculty members, R & D is expected to pickup. IBAB is already a partner in the CSIR-sponsored project 'Development of versatile, portable software for Bioinformatics' under its New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative.

I am also very pleased to report that the Government of Karnataka has instituted two Chief Minister’s scholarships for the best male and female student in each batch. Mrs. Sudha Murty of Infosys foundation has very graciously agreed to institute two medals for the best performing students. Millipore India has shown exemplary generosity and social commitment by providing funds for two scholarships to be given to outstanding women candidates, while Sartorius India has agreed to support a meritorious student with life science background.

I should mention that we do not regard this programme merely as a course that specializes in bioinformatics. Although our focus is bioinformatics, we see ourselves as providing a high-quality and modern postgraduate education. Whether it is basic skills in programming or understanding structural biology, a critical reading of the literature or doing computer modelling of biological systems, our attempt is to 'educate' in the true sense of the word rather than just 'teach'. I hope that really valuable attributes – exposures and competence in a range of subjects, basic professional skills in writing and speaking, the ability to work in a group etc – will be retained even more than the specifics of the subjects being taught. In the 'knowledge economy', especially the higher-end of this economy, a good education acquires an even higher value than it has always had and a multi-disciplinary one even more so.

However, though the course content and teaching at IBAB is of very high standard an official stamp of recognition is very essential. This is particularly important for getting due credit while seeking admission to academic institutions of higher learning. We have initiated the process towards seeking recognition of our course and eventually a Deemed University status from the Government of India. Since IBAB's mandate is to remain an autonomous, self-financing institution, we need to charge steeper fees than is usual for postgraduate courses in other government funded universities. We hope that the quality and market-relevance of the education justifies this.

Discussions are also going on with some leading industries to initiate collaborative research projects. However, no academic institution can survive on fees alone and financial support from the Government of Karnataka and other funding agencies (DBT, MIT, CSIR etc) is crucial to meet the infrastructure costs.

I pray that the overwhelming moral and technical help from my colleagues at various institutions such as IISc, NCBS, JNCASR, NAL, ISRO, SINP will continue, so as to attain a high academic standard. While the interaction with these institutions at the moment is mainly one-way, it is my sincere hope that it will prove mutually beneficial in the long run.

The effort being made to set-up an education and research centre relevant to the needs of the industry is rather novel in India. It cannot succeed without the proactive support and constant interaction of the concerned industry. As already mentioned, several corporate organizations have been very generous in sparing their scientists to help design and teach various modules at IBAB. I do hope that the performance of the first batch of students will make them favourably inclined to do so, to an even larger extent.

Finally, I look forward to IBAB forging ahead in the coming years and ready to meet newer and tougher challenges in the frontier areas of bioinformatics and biotechnology.

April 2003