The Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) has announced that thirty professionals who will complete the one-year intensive postgraduate diploma programme will be ready to join the pharma-biotech industry in April 2003.

According to sources from IBAB, the institute has attracted aspiring biotechnologists from all over India, with the inaugural three-semester post-graduate course, that commenced in February this year. The first course attracted 2000 applications out which 30 were short listed as final entrants to the course. The class of 30, had students representing diverse backgrounds ranging from medicine, dentistry and agriculture to engineering, maths and physics. Apart from the regular academic course content, students are assigned group and individual projects and assignments on which they are regularly assessed.

Industry estimates present a severe shortage of Bioinformatics professionals, who need to be proficient in both life sciences and information technology and required to analyse the stockpile of data on cells, microbes, proteins and DNA. IBAB was started to meet this growing demand with a curriculum that has been designed to provide competence in computational biology/Bioinformatics, biology, mathematics and statistics.

The institute, which is a joint venture of the Karnataka government and the ICICI Bank, has a nine member governing board with representation from IT (information technology), BT (biotechnology), academia, industry and the state government. Prof. Manju Bansal is the Director and Professor of Bioinformatics here who has been one of the pioneers in developing software to study bio-molecular structures.

According to the pharma-biotech industry sources, who are on the look out for bioinformaticians for specialized areas of research, the focused approach of IBAB will ease the shortage of professionals.

The IBAB has announced the admissions of the second batch of students for the postgraduate course early this month.