The Hindu : Certificate course in Bioinformatics launched

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 28, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Certificate course in Bioinformatics launched

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 27 .The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and NIIT today announced the launch of a six-month certificate programme in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

The course will be offered under the aegis of IIT Delhi's Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT). IIT's supercomputing facility for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology will be working along with NIIT to equip postgraduate students in dealing with the challenges of this emerging field in a better way.

With the International Data Corporation estimating that IT spending in Bio-Sciences would cross 128 million dollars by 2005, the worldwide spending on the use of IT in Bioinformatics is likely to spiral up to 20 billion dollars by 2007.

The six-month programme would include training in the fundamentals of modern biology, IT and hands on training in Bioinformatics on the supercomputer. While the Bioinformatics modules would be offered at IIT, the IT modules would be delivered at NIIT's centres of excellence. To be conducted in two phases, each batch would as of now have only 25 students.

Admission to the course would be done through a common entrance test, with the first one scheduled to be held on May 9.

Speaking on the occasion, the Director of IIT Delhi, R.S. Sirohi, explained: "The new millennium has ushered in rapid advances in bio-sciences creating a deluge of information on genomics and proteomics with several scientific and technological challenges and opportunities. Any progress in this direction is of immediate relevance to society.''

According to the Coordinator of the Supercomputing facility, B Jayaram: "The highly interdisciplinary nature of Bioinformatics calls for specialised training programmes apart from getting access to supercomputers. The students will also get to work with people who have actually developed the software for genome analysis, protein structure prediction and in silico drug design.''

While pointing out that the programme would help bridge the gap between formal and non-formal education, the Chairman of NIIT, Rajendra S.Pawar, said, "content creation, convenience and design'' would be an important part of the programme. For details on the programme students can log on to the website www.fitt-iitd.org or www.niit.com.

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