Realising the need of training and education for generating interdisciplinary human resource relevant to biotechnology, a Centre of the Biotechnology will be set up in Faridabad by the next year.
The Biotechnology Centre will be jointly set up by the Ministry of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The announcement was made by Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences.
Sibal told a media interaction, 'The centre would be beneficial to all countries in the region including India in developing knowledge-rich highly skilled human resource, harmonisation of policies & procedures in biotechnology and indirectly promoting trade. Biotechnology being essentially global, the partnerships are as much within as across countries.' He added, 'The centre will create a place from which many such partnerships will emerge. A centre of education, training and research in biotechnology with intimate contributions from the countries of the region and academic institutions from the rest of the world and provides a meeting place where innovation, enterprise, and industrial development will germinate.'
The mandate of the UNESCO Regional Centre for Biotechnology is to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research, education and training in order to create human resources required at the biotech interface of engineering, chemistry, physics and medicine and to empower human resources critical for a wide range of biotech needs and to seek knowledge-based innovative and context-specific biotechnology solutions. The goal of this interdisciplinary Ph.D. programme is to educate students at the interface of engineering, physical sciences and the biomedical sciences via a flexible structure that permits explorations at the intersections of these disciplines. The center will be open to industry for enhancing their skills in specific areas. Domain-specific programmes will also be designed for people from basic sciences in nanotechnology, implants and devices, vaccine development and stem cell biology in order to create a cadre of highly specialized scientists for technology development in these areas.
