ABOUT IBAB
Education, research and entrepreneurship in Bioinformatics and Biotechnology
The institute has received overwhelming support from academic and industry scientists, primarily those in Bangalore. It's programmes would not be possible without this ongoing support.
Postgraduate course in bioinformatics started in 2002. The 8 th batch of this 18-month course are now doing their course work. Overall, 75% of these students have found jobs in industry.
Postgraduate laboratory course in bio-techniques started in 2003. The 6 th batch of this 8 (or 14) month course are graduating shortly. Overall, 95% of these students have found jobs in industry.
Entrepreneurship: In 2004, IBAB (along with BITS-Pilani, IIM-A, IIT-B and SPJIMR) was selected by the Wadhwani Foundation for funding related to entrepreneurship. These activities have ramped up and resulted in some students registering their companies. Research in this area has led to several publications, including in Nature Biotechnology.
Corporate education has been ramped up in 2005 and several modules are offered each year.
Research work by the faculty has led to a bioinformatics tool, ExPrimer for primer design. It has also led to several publications in international journals.
MISSION
General Information
It was set up on the recommendation of the Vision Group on Biotechnology, an advisory body to the Chief Minister of Karnataka. The Vision Group includes representation from academia, industry and government each recognizing the strengths of other sectors and the value of working together. IBAB's Governing Body has distinguished members from all three sectors. Consequently members of all three rallied to help jump-start the courses, providing support in teaching as well as internships and placements.
IBAB's mission is to catalyze the growth of the biotech industry.
The institute has the following immediate objectives:
To become a globally recognised institution of higher learning in bioinformatics and biotechnology.
To undertake short-term training programmes especially executive training programmes to upgrade the skills of professionals in related industries.
To provide incubation and other serivces to entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs.
To carry out research and development.
MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
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.
PROGRAMMES
The Postgraduate Course in Bioinformatics started in 2002. The 9th batch of this 18-month course are now doing their course work. Overall, 75% of these students have found jobs in industry.
The Laboratory Course in Bio-techniques started in 2003. The 7th batch of this 8- (or 14-) month course are graduating shortly. Overall, 95% of these students have found jobs in industry.
In 2004, IBAB (along with BITS-Pilani, IIM-A, IIT-B and SPJIMR) was selected by the Wadhwani Foundation for funding related to entrepreneurship. These activities have ramped up and resulted in some students registering their companies. Research in this area has led to a publication in Nature Biotechnology. Details of these programmes are to be found in the Entrepreneurship section of the site.
Corporate education has been ramped up in 2005 and several modules are offered each year. In addition several modules of the Short Term Courses are offered to students and others each year.
BIOINFORMATICS
Introduction~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first batch of students for this course at IBAB was admitted in 2002. Nineth batch of students are undergoing training and will be graduating in April 2010. All the students who have graduated from IBAB so far have been placed by large in industry with a few opting for placement in academia. Students are selected after a national-level entrance test and interview. | 1. 95% real placements (Click for details: Bioinformatics / Biotechniques) 2. State of the art infrastructure (applicants welcome to visit IBAB & see the facilities) 3. Excellent teaching: IBAB faculty / Guest talks |
Bioinformatics background
Recent times have witnessed unparalleled transformations in both information technology (IT) and life sciences (BIO). Constant innovations in computers and information technology have brought in conceptual changes with wide range of applications in the complex space of biological sciences. With the biological data also growing at a rapid pace in the present “omics” age, it is unthinkable not to exploit the IT/ computer science to organise, analyse and interpret vast amount of biological information. Such applications have already brought in paradigm changes in the way biological science is practiced. In the opinion of distinguished panel of international experts (Nature 23 March 2006), the greatest impact of computer science will be felt in the area of biological science since the greatest challenges and opportunities originate in the biological science area. There is an urgent need to endow new kind of professionals to tackle the scientific challenges in the biological sciences by forging strong alliance between biological and computer sciences. It is not an exaggeration that in the near future Bio-IT interactions may well have the potential to replace/limit wet-lab experiments and enhance the speed of generation of fresh information giving a new direction to the advancement of biological science. The ramifications that these will have on research and commercial activities in the areas of health sciences and agriculture are enormous. It is predicted that concepts of computer science are poised to become as fundamental to biology as mathematics to physics as there is growing awareness among biologists that understanding cells and cellular systems requires viewing them as information processing systems.
CHEMINFORMATICS
Introduction~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The postgraduate diploma course in bioinformatics, the flagship program of IBAB has been a successful training program in a multidisciplinary field. With this enriching experience, the institute is now gearing up to offer another multidisciplinary course in cheminformatics which is in a way closely tied to bioinformatics. | 1. 95% real placements (Click for details: Bioinformatics / Biotechniques) 2. State of the art infrastructure (applicants welcome to visit IBAB & see the facilities) 3. Excellent teaching: IBAB faculty / Guest talks |
Cheminformatics Background
In the past few decades, the drug design field has extensively used computational tools to accelerate the development of new and improved therapeutics. Researchers have recognized the urgent need to establish relationships between chemical structures and their properties. Quantitative Structure Property Relationships (QSPR) along with Linear Gibbs Free Energy Relationships (LFER) and Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships (QSAR) have been established for a wide variety of chemical molecules.
Cheminformatics analysis tools are gaining in sophistication, and are earning increasing respect as tools crucial for the rapid development of new therapeutics. One factor driving the need for effective chemical data analysis is the tremendous growth of molecular databases as a result of automated combinatorial synthesis techniques and high through put assay systems. Cheminformatics techniques facilitate the analysis and interpretation of the chemical information contained within these sets of complex and high-dimensional molecular data.
IT-proficient scientists and chemists are now able to generate, retrieve and analyse scientific information that is more accurate and useful by making use of specialised software for analysis of their vast data. It is difficult to imagine a chemical research laboratory or company without the application of computers in the development and testing of drugs, storage or analysis of data.
Cheminformatics is a fast growing field and there is a lack of qualified scientific professionals who can use computers and databases for chemical compounds or drug development. Realising its immense potential, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries are now going in for qualified and trained staff in cheminformatics. New career avenues have also opened up for IT as well as computer-proficient science graduates for acquiring, managing, or utilising chemical information with the help of computer software or hardware. These professionals are essential to develop and maintain programs for specific scientific applications.
With the exponentially growing and highly competitive drug and pharmaceutical market, cheminformatics professionals thus have immense importance in the drug development process as they implement IT tools to replace traditional processes. The demand for such IT – chemical professionals is also growing substantially. These professionals are expected to contribute in bringing new products to the market quickly and economically. In the years to come cheminformatics shall play a vital role in new drug discovery programs and candidates with professional experience are bound to have a good job market.
CORPORATE EDUCATION & OTHER MODULAR COURSES
IBAB has, over the years conducted various events that are of interest to working professionals, outlined below.Wth the emergence of bioinformatics as in interdisciplinary area of research and teaching, there is growing demand in both academia and life science industry for trained professionals equipped with expertise in both biological and computational sciences. IBAB under the aegis of "Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics research and training" of Department of Information Technology, Government of India, has been offering a number of modular courses to impart proficiency in bioinformatics and related areas for the benefit of students, executives and other working professionals in life science industry. Those wishing to take part may visit IBAB website and register at modcourse@ibab.ac.in
Ongoing or upcoming workshops are as follows
A modular course in Cheminformatics 3-12 August 2010
A modular course in writing good protocols for conducting scientific experiments 19-21 August 2010
Some of the courses and workshops hosted in the past are as follows
| 3 short courses | May-June 2010 |
| “Shell Scripting” for Life Science Scientists and Students | 22-24 December 2008 |
| “Linux” for life science scientists and students | 1-17 December 2008 |
| A modular course on Genomics and Gene Expression Analysis for Biologists | 2-30 Sept 2008 |
| A modular course on Applications of Support Vector Machines and Ant Colony Optimization in Chemo and Bioinformatics | 26-28 Aug 2008 |
| A modular course on Systems Biology | 5-19 Aug 2008 |
| A modular course on Cheminformatics | 1-31 July 2008 |
| Bioinformatics Training Programme for ICMR Scientists | 3-25 Aug 2007 |
| IPR workshop | 15-18 Jan 2007 |
| Genes to Drugs: In-Silico Drug Discovery | 26 June –15 July 2006 |
| A Lab-Course in Biotechnology | 13 May -10 June, 2006 |
| Introduction to Life Science Modeling with Insight II | 13 - 14 March 2006 |
| Patent Agent Training | 13 – 14 February 2006 |
| Bio-Agriculture | 10 - 11 February 2006 |
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| Mammalian Cell Culture | 01 – 04 February 2006 |
| Accelrys Worshop on Structure Based Drug Design | 16 - 17 January 2006 |
| Hands on training on Programs and Utilities of GCG 11.0 | 21 - 22 December 2005 |
| Workshop for Sigma-Aldrich Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. | 21 - 22 December 2005 |
| Workshop on Pharmaceutical Education & Research | 17-18 November 2005 |
| Workshop on Bio-diesel | 11 November 2005 |
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| Workshop on Intellectual Property Rights | 19 -21 October 2005 |
| Global Regulatory & Quality Standards in Clinical Trials | 17 September 2005 |
| Role of Statistics in Clinical Trials | 08 - 09 July 2005 |
| Recombinant DNA technology workshop | 04 - 23 June 2005 |
| Bioinformatics and biotechnology: an introductory course | 04 - 05 June 2005 |
| Workshop on Molecule Drug Design | 23 - 27 May 2005 |
| Workshop on Bioinformatics | 16 - 20 May 2005 |
| Clinical Trials: A Global Opportunity | 15 -17 April 2005 |
| Recombinant DNA technology workshop | 20 - 25 March 2005 |
| Introduction to Bioinformatics and Biotechnology | 01- 02 October 2004 |
| Public-Private Transfer of Knowledge in Biotechnology: Case Studies from India and Europe | 19 - 20 April 2004 |
| International Workshop on Cell Biology | 29 Jan - 05 Feb 2004 |
| One day seminar on IT in Healthcare | 03 November 2003 |
| One day seminar on Business of Biotech | 30 October 2002 |
RESEARCH
The main areas of the faculty's expertise and interest are detailed in this section. The research activities involve both computational and experimental approaches. Collaborative and contract research projects are also being considered. Publications from IBAB and tools developed by our students and faculty are enumerated here.
Dr. N. Yathindra
It has been our endeavor to decipher stereochemistry, polymorphism and topological properties of 2', 5' DNA and 2', 5' RNA duplexes to obtain insights from a stereochemical perspective for Nature's choice of 3', 5' scaffold.
Dr. Kshitish Acharya
A database for co-expressed genes, a mammalian promoter prediction tool and a primer designing tool are being developed. Certain enzymes are also being cloned, expressed and purified.
Dr. Shipra Agrawal
Meta data analysis of microarray expression data of human cancers and genetically inherited disorders are being performed to decode the pathway cross-talk information. Computational analysis and database development has also been initiated on small regulatory RNA molecules, cancer epigenesis and chromatin remodeling factors.
Dr. Gayatri Saberwal
We research the biotech industry
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Promoting entrepreneurship in bioinformatics and biotechnology is one of IBAB's mandates.
IBAB's first activity in this area was theincubation of an immunologist entrepreneur. As a founder member of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the institute is now expanding its efforts in this realm. We have extended company-starting assistance to include mentoring. In addition there will be several programs for and by students. The students have formed an entrepreneurship club, Pracint, which held its maiden programme during Bangalore Bio2004. The institute organizes courses, lecture series and other events, workshops and networking events either on our premises or elsewhere, for various audiences.
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