Biotechnology as a career
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With the increasing awareness and stress on healthy living and environmental protection, biotechnology is set to playa crucial role, and career options in it are vast.
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THE NEW sunrise sector, biotechnology, beckons hundreds of young people aspiring to a career in a science that touches the common man in a myriad ways. Biotechnology involves research-oriented work in diverse fields — agriculture, animal husbandry, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, genetics, and environmental sciences. It also invites participation from qualified researchers and professionals from biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and microbiology
Until recently, biotechnology was offered only at the post-graduate level. Now, with the sector emerging as the new hope of the modern world, the need for preparing a body of researchers and scientists at the undergraduate level is strongly felt. Happily, this has also shown the potential of the sector to create jobs that will address the problems of the world. For structured formal training in biotechnology today, one can choose it as the area of specialisation at the graduation, post-graduation or research level. Most reputed colleges in Bangalore have already begun offering biotechnology as a major. Being an inter-disciplinary field, higher education in the subject does not demand a prior degree in the same subject.
Elsewhere, though B.Sc. Biotech is a new concept, many prestigious institutes have been offering a four-year B.Tech course in Biotechnology for quite some time. For example, IIT Kharagpur offers a B.Tech degree in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering while IIT Chennai and Guwahati offer B.Tech in Biotechnology. IIT Delhi and Kharagpur offer a five-year dual degree M.Tech course (after completion of 10+2) in Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology and IIT Chennai offers a similar M.Tech course in Biotechnology. Admission to these IIT undergraduate programmes is through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). The minimum qualification for admission through JEE is a pass grade in the final examination of 10+2 system or its equivalent.
Besides the IITs, several other institutes and universities offer a B.E./B.Tech Biotechnology course.
Govt. help
A major thrust in the area of biotech education has come from the Government. It has set up the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry of Science & Technology to give impetus to the development of biology and biotechnology. The DBT encourages and supports post-graduate teaching programmes. The Indian Council for Agriculture Research, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and other premier institutions set up by the Government support and interact with educational institutions and now increasingly with the private sector industry to speed up the transfer of technology from the laboratory to end-users. This is where the large pool of scholars and biotech professionals can hope to be absorbed.
With 100 of the country's 200 BT companies making a home in Bangalore, and Karnataka being the first State to boast its own Biotech Policy, it is hardly surprising that biotech education is growing in tandem to serve the needs of the sector. Experts say biotechnology depends heavily on qualified technicians. In fact, they are the backbone of biotech activity, as Seetharam Annadana, India Coordinator of Wageningen University, the Netherlands, has put it. While contract work for foreign companies is okay to start with, Indian companies and educational institutions should start thinking of developing patents and getting into new product development that is of relevance to our economy. This calls for investment in R&D.
Domain expertise vital
Others, like K.K. Narayanan of Metahelix Life Sciences, maintain that the time has come to stop taking pride in doing outsourced work. In the agro-biotech field, the focus should be on developing and creating products. Is biotechnology really going to be the next big bang after IT in terms of job opportunities? What are the similarities and what are the differences? Narayanan says in IT the same bunch of people can code the software for any industry — airline, banking, space — while a biotechnologist in cancer research work will be a complete zero in research work on a plant increasing its yield. Here, domain expertise is necessary. Biotech education in the country is still in its infancy and, say experts, it will be useful to invest in BT education, the use of which will improve human\animal health and crop characteristics in a manner desired by the farmer and develop technologies for a clean environment, rather than encourage technicians take up contract research work.
The new IT and BT Secretary, M.K. Shankaralinge Gowda, who is all set to conduct the Bangalore Bio.com , billed as the biggest BT show in Asia, from July 12, has embarked on revising the State's biotech policy to address these issues, and to make Bangalore the biotech capital of India — both as an industry and as an education centre.
ALLADI JAYASRI
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