Second Summer School on Nanotechnology in Advanced Drug Delivery was organised at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), SAS Nagar, Punjab, from August 10 to 14, 2009.
Summer school was organized as the part of objectives of Centre for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology (CPN) to train young scientists and researchers in the area of pharmaceutical nanotechnology. CPN was established at Department of Pharmaceutics, NIPER with special grant-in-aid from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi. The objectives of the center are to build state of art facility to conduct drug delivery research exploring nanoscience, and to develop human resource in the country in this fascinating area of science.
As a part of center's activity, about 10 schools is planned over a period of five years, of which three such schools were held during May 1 to 5, 2007, December 2 to 6, 2007 and February 24-28, 2009 respectively, to train the students working in the area of nanotechnology from all over the country. The major emphasis of this five days activity was to encourage and motivate the young talent of this country. This school of its own kind mainly focused on the developing synergy between nanotechnology and health care.
Professor Emeritus and a former vice chancellor Panjab University, KN Pathak, inaugurated this school. In his Inaugural address he stated that 'The fusion of nanoscience with drug delivery system could create wonder in history of science'. The five days workshop of summer school constituted of invited talks from internationally renowned and experienced faculties from both India as well as abroad and hands on experience and demonstration of advanced instruments pertinent to nanotechnology such as such as Zetasizer, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope (CLSM), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and non invasive whole body animal imager. Participant had also got opportunity to visit NIPER's national service centers viz., National Toxicology Center, National Bioavailability Center, Center for Safety Pharmacology, Pilot Plant, and central instrumental laboratory.
In all 40 participants in student category were selected which included masters, Ph D, post docs as well as young faculties working at various prestigious universities and research institutes from all over the country. All student participants were also given opportunity to give oral presentation of their research work in field of nanotechnology and budding nanotechnologist award was given for best participant in student category. Besides student participants five senior executives from leading pharma industries such as Dr Reddy's Laboratory, Hyderabad; Astron Research Ltd, Ahmedabad; Torrent Research Center, Ahmedabad and Tata Chemical and Innovation, Pune have also attended this workshop.
On fifth day assessment of school was done by collecting the feedback forms from the participants. This session was coordinated by Dr Sanyog jain, convener of the school and chaired by professor P R Ramarao, director, NIPER and professor A K Bansal, HOD, Pharmaceutics. In this session quries/comments from the participants were addressed and suggestion were analysed for further betterment of school. In feedback form, participants were asked to mark performance of school on various aspects like quality of presentation by speakers and participant, quality of demonstrations, Infrastructure and facility, and hospitality. Among all results hospitality and speakers lecture scored high and all participant were satisfied. Results were encouraging in all respects.
Cent per cent participant wanted school to be conducted in subsequent years. Himanshu Gupta, SRF, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi was awarded with Budding Nanotechnologist Award. Purpose of the award was to encourage the young talent in the field of nanotechnology in drug delivery. The assessment was made on the basis of quality of both abstract submitted by participants and presentation made during the school which was evaluated by team of experts from India and abroad.
Dr Sanyog Jain, assistant professor, Center for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Dept of Pharmaceutics, NIPER who was the convener of this school stated that this five days workshop provided a unique opportunity for all the participants to familiarize with the new developments in the scintillating area of pharmaceutical nanotechnology and its role in drug delivery. This has also given excellent networking opportunities within the participants, pharma industries, faculty of the school and NIPER. This workshop served to demonstrate the intrinsic ability of nanotechnology to drive new paradigm shifts in healthcare.