The third Convocation of National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali was held on November 14, 2005. Over 200 students who had successfully completed their post-graduate and doctoral programs were awarded degrees during the occasion.

Speaking on this occasion Dr. V Krishnamurthy, Chairman, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC), the chief guest, underlined the importance of the pharmaceutical industry in country's economy and appraised the steps initiated by NMCC to improve manufacturing capabilities of the pharmaceutical sector. He stressed that research and innovation are the primary drivers for pharmaceutical industry, as it is a knowledge driven industry.

Highlighting the changed patent scenario in India he pointed out, "Effective utilization of intellectual property rights particularly patents, has acquired great importance for technology up-gradation, growth of the industry, wealth creation and gaining international competitiveness." He lauded the role being played by NIPER in generating trained manpower, capable of taking up future challenges of the pharmaceutical industry.

Earlier in his inaugural speech Professor P Rama Rao, Director, NIPER elaborated the innovative educational tools NIPER has adopted to encourage inter-disciplinary interaction amongst the students. NIPER has created national centres in the area of bioavailability, impurity profiling, toxicology and technology development; to help the nation in facing challenges of globalization.

NIPER is the first national level institution, with the proclaimed objective of becoming a centre of excellence in the area of pharmaceutical education and research. It offers MS (Pharm.), MPharm, MTech., MBA (Pharm.) and PhD degrees in various streams of pharmaceutical sciences.