MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Director's Report 2005

Honourable Minister Shri Basavaraj Horatti, Dr. M. K. Bhan, Prof. Shrinivas Kulkarni, Prof. Sharat Chandra, Members of the Governing body of IBAB and Scientific Advisory Committee, distinguished invitees, officers from the Government of Karnataka, colleagues, friends and my dear students. I extend a warm welcome to you all on behalf of my colleagues and on my own behalf. I thank you for being here to felicitate the third batch of students on their graduation from the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology.

IBAB is a very young institution. It was set up just 4 years ago on the recommendation of the Vision Group on Biotechnology, an advisory body to the Chief Minister of Karnataka. The institute began to function in January 2002 with the intake of 30 students.

I took charge about a year ago, September 1, last year, to be precise. This institution, IBAB, as I see it, coming from a conventional and traditional university system like the Madras University, is different, and is set up to train students keeping in mind “alternative” career options. When I say alternative, I mean not the time-honoured system of training towards academia, which normally at least in our country, relates to a one-way career option. And that is to follow the path of the mentor, towards eventually becoming a scientist or a teacher in a university system. Some of us perhaps are surely the victims of such an inclination, for good or bad. This is possibly because of the traditional mind set that anything other than a research career represents a failure or waste of investment in training. But in to-day’s context such a leaning may not be fully appropriate, as there are several avenues of opportunities to serve science in general. For instance, scientists in industry can greatly contribute to both basic and applied research in ways that are sometimes more innovative than that carried out in the corridors of academia. I hasten to add, lest I am misconstrued, by the distinguished academicians who have gathered here, that academic research without doubt is an essential corner stone of scientific research.

In recent years we have been witnessing a substantial and sharp decline in the faculty positions available to the employable pool of scientists and post graduate students in the university system. IBAB has been created with the intention of casting a wider net of opportunities to post-graduate students of all branches of science, the opportunities created by what many referred to as the “new biology” consequent to the deluge of information from the sequencing of hundreds o,f genomes. It is in this context that IBAB is perhaps distinct from other institutions.

Moreover, it has become obligatory now, more than ever before for collaborations among researchers from physical, biological, mathematical and statistical sciences to enhance the interpretation and application of how disease processes are affected at a molecular, genetic and cellular level. Hence, training young people in areas spanning quantitative biosciences such as bioinformatics which I feel bridges the science coalition, is one of the most important first steps. I believe IBAB was created with this foresight.

Naturally, the institute's flagship course continues to be the 18 months programme, namely the Post-graduate diploma in Bioinformatics being offered since inception. The institute has only a handful of faculty on its roll, but in practice, a very large number of faculty members from academic institutions, scientists from industry and experts from business enterprises who form the adjunct faculty and who participate most eagerly in teaching this highly interdisciplinary subject of bioinformatics. Some of the institutions and companies include IISc, NCBS, CHG, NAL, ISRO, AstraZeneca, GSK, BIOCON, METAHELIX, Accelrys, GE and IBM. The proximity to these renowned institutions and the collegiality that exists between them and IBAB has rendered this place something very unique and perhaps difficult to emulate elsewhere.

I take this opportunity to sincerely thank these institutions and their faculty for their time and untiring enthusiasm to visit IBAB. I would like to acknowledge the key role played in this by the first director Prof. Manju Bansal, Prof. Sharat Chandra, and all the faculty and staff of IBAB, in fostering collegiality and a network to provide the best of education to the students of IBAB.

Another salient feature of this Post Graduate Diploma Course is the internship program in which every student undergoes training during the last six months of the course, most of them in an industry environment. This is with the idea of providing them mentorship in an entirely different environment which could complement and supplement their academic or scientific training. This will expose them to different opportunities that exist in industry. IBAB has been striving to expand its network across different industrial set ups to enable larger scope and opportunities for the IBAB-trained student. While most of the students opt for internship at industrial locations, some who are smitten by the Ph.D bug, like some of us were, choose to enter academic laboratories and this is encouraged by IBAB.

IBAB has established an MOU with the University of Reunion and INRIA, France to enable IBAB students to spend 4-6 months of time during their internships. One of the IBAB faculty members, Dr. Acharya, will be visiting the University of Sydney in the next few months, at their invitation, to explore the possibilities of student exchange for internship, and collaborative research.

In this context, I am happy to inform you that a faculty member, Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan from Virginia Tech. USA, who spent a sabbatical earlier with IBAB, has joined us recently as an adjunct faculty. He will be teaching students of IBAB during the summer and will conduct collaborative research with IBAB faculty in the areas of bioinformatics. In the coming academic year, another distinguished professor and biotechnology entrepreneur from McGill University, Canada will be spending his sabbatical year at IBAB.

While all of these may sound routine and mundane for established institutions, these I feel are creditable achievements for a young institution like IBAB. It only goes to demonstrate that IBAB during its short existence, has been able to build a reputation to attract the best from across the globe. IBAB will continue to strive to provide an excellent multidisciplinary education in biotechnology and bioinformatics.

Besides the 18-month Diploma Course in Bioinformatics, IBAB initiated an intense six month course in bio-techniques to cater to the requirement of well trained and reliable manpower in biotech laboratories. The course content, which primarily consists of hands-on lab training has been devised in consultation with various biotech companies.

It is a matter of satisfaction that all the students from both these courses are well placed in the companies where they undertook their internship. These include Accelrys, IBM, Infosys, Molecular Connections, Connexios, Biocon, Gangagen, GSK, Millipore, Ocimum, Strand Genomics, Quintiles, and Metahelix to name some. A few wishing to pursue research careers in academia have found admissions in leading universities in Europe and US.

Although the students of IBAB are well accepted by the academic community within and outside India, we lack the official stamp of recognition as a degree-giving Institution. While the placement record of our first three batches indicates that most employers are not worried about this, some institutions are finicky about it. In the interests of students seeking entry into such academic institutions IBAB is trying to obtain recognition for the courses.

Another activity during the past one year has been the organization of short-term courses in topics such as recombinant DNA technology, clinical trials, bioinformatics, and small molecule drug discovery. These were well received and appreciated by participants. Several such courses are in the pipeline.

There is another facet to the activities of IBAB. Last year IBAB was selected to be one of the first five affiliates of the National Entrepreneurship Network or NEN of the Wadhwani Foundation, set up in 2000 by the well known entrepreneur Mr Romesh Wadhwani, NRI and an alumnus of IIT, Mumbai. The main aim of this is to seed the idea of entrepreneurship among the youth and promote entrepreneurship development to generate job opportunities. The NEN entrepreneurship activities are in full swing with the recent selection of IBAB as the “Center for excellence for entrepreneurship education”. These activities are spearheaded by Dr. Gayatri Saberwal. IBAB students are also greatly benefited by this program as they are exposed to lectures on entrepreneurship, IPR and other related issues. I extend my compliments to Dr. Gayatri Saberwal for her leadership role.

In this context, I wish to mention that IBAB has also the mandate for 'incubation of entrepreneurs'. Microtest Innovations, headed by Dr. Jayasuryan, started its incubation 2 years back and is making good progress towards developing diagnostic kits. Another company “Cellworks Group Inc” started just a few months ago. It is into “in silico” drug discovery research. One of our faculty members, Dr. Shireen Vali, is one of the founding members of this group. We are also privileged to have the Centre for Human Genetics on our premises.

I am happy to report that the Government of Karnataka has finalized the architectural and building plans for IBAB’s own premises (about 50,000 sq. ft.) at the biotech park, the 'Bangalore Helix' to be located in Electronics City. Construction work is likely to begin shortly. IBAB is grateful to GOK for their generous support. I do hope that the physical infrastructure can be set up rapidly and perhaps we can host the next convocation at our own premises.

The effort being made to set-up an educational and research centre such as IBAB relevant to the needs of industry is rather novel in India. It is obvious that this effort cannot succeed without constant interaction and the proactive support 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 as well as in providing internship opportunities and placements. I do hope that the performance of the three batches of students will make them favorably inclined to do so to an even larger extent in the future.

Biocon India has been generous and instituted a Faculty Chair position at IBAB for which we are indeed very grateful. I would like to invite other industry to come forward in building and upgrading IBAB's laboratory infrastructure to augment the training and research activities of IBAB.

GOK, Millipore India, Mrs. Sudha Murty of Infosys Foundation, Sartorius India and Astra Zeneca Foundation have taken the lead in instituting scholarships and medals to the performing students every year. I wish to express my deep sense of appreciation for their kind gesture. I am confident that they will continue to extend their support through greater participation in the activities of IBAB.

I would be failing in my responsibility if I did not acknowledge the incredible source of support and goodwill that IBAB derives from Ms. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who could not be here today as she is at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education to receive one more Honorary Doctorate degree.

Of course, the continuous financial support by the IT & BT Department of GOK and excellent co-operation of the officers in all our activities has helped us to concentrate in our academic activities. IBAB owes them a good deal of appreciation.

The last twelve months of my stay at IBAB has been a great learning experience, challenging, sometimes too much so, compared to my earlier position as a teacher and a researcher in the university system. I recognize that there are very many more challenges ahead. I look forward with great hope and confidence to IBAB successfully meeting all the diverse and ambitious goals set by its founders.

All of us realize that no educational institution aiming to set high academic standards can survive with out the financial support from government and other funding agencies. I would like to specially appeal to DBT to seek its assistance in furthering IBAB’s program of excellent training in the field of bioinformatics and biotechnology.

Finally, I congratulate all the students who will be receiving their hard earned diploma and also those receiving special honours. The team IBAB wishes them the very best in all their future endeavors and a happy and successful life.

I feel particularly honoured by the presence of Prof. Shrinivas Kulkarni who was gracious enough to accept my request to address our students at extremely short notice. Thank you all once again for sparing your valuable time to be with us on this important occasion in IBAB’s life.

August 2005