Institute of Bioinformatics & Applied Biotechnology

Esteemed Professor Menon, Prof. Vijay Chandru, Sri Vidyashankar, Members of the Governing Body and Scientific Advisory Board of IBAB, Prof. Sharat Chandra, distinguished invitees, officers from the Government of Karnataka, parents of the graduating IBAB students, IBAB alumni and my dear colleagues and students.

Let me also extend to you all a very warm welcome to the 5th convocation of IBAB.

We are particularly privileged and honoured to have Professor M G K Menon to deliver the 5th convocation address of IBAB. He is a luminary with a highly distinguished career as a scientist and as a policy maker. His vision and foresight has had high impact on the economic growth and development of India, as we are seeing today in the flourishing IT sector. I understand also that it was Professor Menon who indicated to late Mr. J R D Tata, way back in the 1960’s, about the emerging field of software. Today we see that TCS has grown to be one of the leading and largest software companies.

Professor Menon has been at the forefront in the cause of education. I came across his address to the planning commission, around the 7th Plan Period. He has expressed his deep concern and emphasized the priority that one ought to attach to education. I quote "Education is somehow taken for granted; and there is a tendency to regard education as a low priority item, as a luxury item or as an incidental item. Education does not have the public visibility as in other sectors, except when there is a major frustration or indiscipline”. I guess things have not substantially changed even as we enter the 11th plan period and after 60 years of independence, except that we have managed, to quote him again “to extend what exists and produce more of the same”, that is a large number of colleges and universities. As a result, more frequently than ever before academics and industries alike bemoan and grumble about the unsuitability of more than 50% of the students that come out of these systems. He had foreseen this and warned about it.

In this context I may mention, however immodest it may sound, that IBAB has taken a lead in providing a holistic education in the field of bioinformatics and biotechnology, with an emphasis on personality development, as contrasted with pedantic transmission of knowledge. This has become feasible with the most enthusiastic support from academia and industry that cluster across Bangalore in particular. Proof of this effort is mirrored in the 100% placement record of IBAB students, year after year, both in bioinformatics and biotechnology companies as well as in academia.

I welcome you Sir to this function with a great sense of humility and esteem, and we eagerly look forward to your inspirational address. Perhaps you will touch upon how youngsters can be motivated to get them back to pursue advanced studies of science subjects. I am sure you are fully cognizant of the distressingly sharp decline in the enrollment of students in the basic science stream.

Prof. Vijay Chandru, is a brilliant academician turned entrepreneur, and his company Strand Genomics earlier and Strand Life Sciences now, with the motto “Algorithms for life” is the first bioinformatics company from India that has a global presence. It is a leading provider of bioinformatics and cheminformatics products and solutions, to biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Strand Life Sciences was recently recognized as IT Innovator by NASSCOM in 2006, and as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2007.

After his Ph.D. from MIT, Prof. Vijay Chandru spent considerable amount of time in academia including Purdue Univ, Pennsylvania Univ, MIT, IBM’s T.J. Watson center in New York and IISc. While in IISc, Strand Life Sciences was born, and it was the first university spin-off company, fully promoted by faculty. Prof. Vijay Chandru is one of the inventors of the SIMPUTER which was subsequently acquired by Geodesic Information Systems. He is for sure a source of inspiration to the academics who wish to pursue entrepreneurial activities. All of us look forward to hearing your prescription to be a successful scientist cum entrepreneur in the BIO-IT arena.

As Professor Sharat Chandra pointed out, although IBAB is an initiative of the Government of Karnataka, it has been fashioned with a national or even a global perspective. This is clearly reflected in the composition of students, year after year, students come from all parts of India and occasionally from even the neighbouring countries. What one will witness in IBAB is a mini-India.

IBAB has received uninterrupted and enormous support from the Department of IT, BT and ST of the Government of India over the last 6 years. This has been instrumental in the smooth functioning of the institute. If IBAB is moving to its own huge premises, with student hostel and other facilities at the Biotech park in the next couple of months, the credit should go to Sri Vidya Shankar who has been giving the utmost attention to all our requirements so patiently and willingly. His stint at Delhi School of Economics and Harvard University might have made him look compassionately towards academics. A very warm welcome to you sir.

I am happy to report that almost all the graduating students of the bioinformatics course, 39 of them, have been placed, in companies engaged in life science activities. More companies - such as Jubilant Biosys, Aurigene and Bristlecone (India) - have recruited our students this time. Notably, six of the students from the graduating batch took up internship in the academic environment at the University of Reunion and INRIA, France. Some of students might get back and register for the Ph.D. program there in the next few months.

Similarly students of the Biotechniques course, wherein the emphasis is on the wet lab experimentation, have been undergoing internship in various biotech companies.

I may mention with some degree of pride that a few students from previous batches are enrolled for their PhDs in institutions like Cornell University and the Max Planck Institutes.

IBAB proposes to initiate a new 18 month-course in cheminformatics from the next batch of admission, that is from November 2007.

Besides regular courses, the institute has also been conducting training programmes for others in academia and industry. This includes one on IPR for post-graduate students and teachers and another on bioinformatics for ICMR scientists from different parts of the country.

We embarked on a new program in the past year to train Masters' level students as project trainees. I am happy to report this has been a huge success. A good number of selected trainees from around the country spend 4-6 months period working on research projects. At any point of time, there will always be at least 10-15 students ensuring continuous support for the research activity. There are more requests for this than we could handle.

We have added a new adjunct faculty in Dr. Ashwini Mathur, currently, Head, Biostatistics and Statistical Reporting, Novartis, Hyderabad. He is an outstanding teacher and has been teaching modules relating to biostatistics for the last 3-4 years.

On the research front, I am pleased to mention that IBAB has received a substantial research grant from DST under the FIST program. This is in addition to individual research grants that faculty members have obtained from different agencies like Department of Biotechnology and Department of Information Technology. IBAB has established a research collaboration with Phillip India - Bangalore relating to the molecular basis of Type II diabetes and obesity. Efforts are underway to utilise the outcome of this work in a larger program involving clinical research in collaboration with partners from a European Union consortium. Separately, the collaborative research program on “Mass scale analysis of gene expression patterns in mammalian species in the context of cancer and other related biological phenomenon.” initiated last year with a well known Midwestern University in the US is being continued.

The institute has already seen publications in reputed international journals like Nature Biotechnology, Bioinformatics and Nucleic Acids Research by the younger faculty. They have also developed several databases which will soon be made public. Besides these, a series of articles that discusses concepts of business, entrepreneurship and intellectual property relevant to academic biological research is underway. A couple of them have already appeared in Current Science. Furthermore, I am happy to mention that IBAB may soon be recognized as a Ph.D center by a well known university.

I can say with confidence that besides the strong teaching and training commitment, research activity has taken a firm hold at the institute. With the recent recruitment of a couple of new faculty members, IBAB hopes to achieve a larger research output and still better trained students in the coming years. A number of accomplished individuals are looking at IBAB for faculty positions. This is a welcome sign that augurs well for the future and should give a sense of satisfaction to the Government of Karnataka and Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw who were responsible for creating this institute.

I am sure many of you might be wondering why am I elaborating all of these, as they are to be expected from any good institution. To be honest, I myself felt hesitant and embarrassed to talk about these, having spent my entire career in the university system. But one should not forget that IBAB is an infant institution, only 6 years young, with a huge commitment to teaching activities, and therefore it is not trivial to accomplish this.

On the incubation and entrepreneurship front, IBAB has had one new incubatee namely, Novozymes, which is setting up its research wing in India. Symbiosis Biowares, a cell biology platform company and Microtest Innovations, involved in developing diagnostics for HIV and other diseases continue to stay with us. IBAB and Center for Human Genetics have mutually benefited by sharing lab space, several sophisticated instruments and academic discussions. Due to the efforts of yet another colleague, IBAB was selected to be on the Honor Roll for its activities during the nation-wide 'Entrepreneurship week 2007'.

IBAB has been fortunate to receive unflinching support from both academia and industry. I wish to record my sincere appreciation to each and every one of the individuals from IISc, NCBS, Quintiles, GSK, GE, Accelrys, AstraZeneca, Cranes Software, Cyberplus, NAL, Metahelix, Strand Life Sciences, Cell Works, who have been providing teaching support.

I am grateful to Biocon for its continuous support on several fronts including sponsorship of faculty chairs year after year. AstraZeneca Research Foundation of India has endowed a chair in cheminformatics. We do look for opportunities to establish linkages with companies for mutual advantage and welcome sponsorship of faculty chairs which help us in recruiting new faculty who can work with both IBAB and the sponsoring company.

Millipore, Sartorius and Accelrys besides providing merit scholarships have agreed to support a few financial assistantships from the next academic year. My gratitude to Mr. Sudhir Kant (Millipore), Mr. Amit Chatterjee (Sartorius) and Mr. Anand Gupta (Accelrys) for their generosity. A new addition to this list is Strand Life Sciences which has instituted one fellowship each in Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics. Thank you Prof. Vijay Chandru.

This is the occasion that the team IBAB wishes to record its sincere gratefulness to the Department of IT, BT and ST, The Government of Karnataka for the generous support in so many ways since inception and the autonomy given to the institute. I take this opportunity to thank officers at all levels who have been showing genuine concern to all our needs, more so now, when the construction of IBAB campus is taking shape. I would like to once again express our deep sense of appreciation to Mr. Vidyashankar for his extraordinary effort in creating the new premises of IBAB at the Biotech Park.

Finally, I congratulate all the students who have earned their diploma and greet those who will receive individual honours.