MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

The Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) is a joint venture of the Government of Karnataka and ICICI with a mandate to help grow the biotech industry. It is a matter of pride and satisfaction that with the involvement of leading academic institutes and industry IBAB has attained high standards in bioinformatics and biotechnology education. The Institute has attained national and international visibility in a short span of four years.

IBAB is an educational institute that has completed four years of operations where over 120 students have successfully qualified and are now working in various companies and academic institutions nationally and internationally.

The postgraduate diploma course in bioinformatics was the first course offered by IBAB. Candidates are selected based on an all-India entrance test conducted at six centers followed by an interview at Bangalore. Students come from diverse backgrounds such as engineering, medicine, pharma, agriculture, life science, physical, chemical and statistical sciences with good representation from each discipline. Apart from the core courses related to bioinformatics, students undergo training in areas like IPR in biotechnology, business and science, scientific writing etc. The diversity in the students' background has made group study a valuable tool.

The course curriculum is designed to introduce the students to basic concepts in biology, computers, statistics, mathematics, chemistry which form the backbone of bioinformatics to train them in the latest tools and techniques in this area.

The methodology IBAB has adopted, to train a diverse class through in-house projects and 6-month internships, has proven itself as demonstrated by the acceptance of IBAB graduates in industry. Today IBAB has a placement rate of 95%.

The second course launched by IBAB is the laboratory course in biotechniques. There is increasing demand for reliable technical expertise in the area of molecular biology/biotechnology. Many post graduate courses are unable to provide adequate training in laboratory bio-techniques. This course aims to fill this gap. However, the course is more than just a series of experimental demonstrations and hands-on sessions and involves thorough familiarization with experimental planning, execution and hypothesis-testing. This course too has received a good response from the industry and students from both the batches have been placed.

Apart from the two regular courses IBAB also conducts workshops and short term training programs. In the last three years IBAB has conducted more than ten workshops covering topics like Business of biotech, Hands-on bioinformatics, Cell biology, Small molecule drug design, Clinical trials, Recombinant DNA techniques etc. The duration of these workshops range from 1 day to 3 weeks.

IBAB is also involved in promoting entrepreneurship in biotechnology and related areas. It has been selected as a founder member of the National Entrepreneurship Network initiated by the Wadhwani foundation along with IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Mumbai, BITS Pilani and SPJIMR Mumbai.

Two R&D companies are being incubated by IBAB. Microtest Innovations is in the area of disease diagnostics, and Cellworks Goup is working in the area of in-silico drug discovery. Additionally several groups of IBAB students are exploring ideas to start their own companies.

In summary, IBAB is uniquely positioned to train the right manpower, to help companies start and succeed and to help scientists interface with industry and thereby to help the bio-related industry grow into a large and mature one.