The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, is celebrating the Silver Jubilee of its foundation on November 26. President Dr Abdul Kalam would participate in the celebrations as the chief guest. To mark the occasion CCMB is organizing a week-long symposium on the "Current Excitement in Biology" from November 24 to 29, 2002. The symposium will address several questions that have emerged after the mapping of the human genome sequence, which is now available to the scientists.

According to a press release issued by CCMB, many leading scientists in the world and several Fellows of the Royal Society, UK, and the National Academy of Sciences, US, would participate in the symposium. Two Nobel laureates, Rolf Zinkernagel (physiology and medicine) and Robert Huber (chemistry) would grace the occasion by attending the symposium.

More than 30 scientists from the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia and some other European countries have already confirmed their participation. Many distinguished scholars and scientists from India would be present.

R A Mashelkar, Director-General of CSIR, is the Chairman of the National Organising Committee with Dr Lalji Singh, Director, CCMB, as the Convenor. The Organising Committee consists of Dr M S Swaminathan, Dr P M Bhargava, former Director of CCMB, N K Ganguly, Director-General of ICMR, K V Raghavan, Director, IICT, E Premkumar Reddy, Director, FELS Institute, Philadelphia, M S R Rao, Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, among others.