Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB)

The Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) is a research and teaching institute located in the International Tech Park, Bangalore. Its mission is to help grow the biotech industry. In order to fulfill this mission, it has adopted the strategies of education, research and promoting entrepreneurship.

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Brief history

The Department of Information Technology and Biotechnology of the Government of Karnataka, and ICICI Bank, established the Institute in 2001. The institute has received overwhelming support from academic and industry scientists, primarily those in Bangalore. Its programmes would not be possible without this ongoing support.

IBAB's first Director, Prof. Manju Bansal is a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She was with the institute for the first 3 years. She was succeeded by Prof. N. Yathindra of the University of Madras.

Although currently located in 15,700 sq. ft. at the International Tech Park, the institute will be moving to its own buildings soon. The academic block of the new campus will have (in its first phase) 60,000 sq. ft. There will also be hostel accommodation and a dining block.

Funding support

The institute continues to be supported by the Government of Karnataka. It has been funded under DST's FIST programme, and has received research funding from the Ministry of IT and Dept. of Biotechnology, both of the Government of India. It has received faculty chairs from AstraZeneca Research Foundation, Biocon and Merck & Co. and has also been funded by the Wadhwani Foundation. IBAB has received scholarship support from the Government of Karnataka, Accelrys, Merck & Co, Millipore, Sartorius and from an annonymous donor. Mrs. Sudha Murty of the Infosys Foundation has endowed medals to two of the best students of the graduating bioinformatics class each year. Several companies and individuals have supported the student's entrepreneurship activities.

Education

IBAB offers Postgraduate Diploma Courses in Bioinformatics (since 2002), Biotechniques (since 2003) and, starting in November 2007, an endowed chair by the AstraZeneca Research Foundation India will be used for teaching a Cheminformatics curriculum for the first time. The bioinformatics course involves 12 months of teaching and, in the third term, a 6-month practical placement in industry (or academia). The biotechniques course involves 8 months of teaching and an optional 6 month research project. Batch sizes of students are deliberately kept small (about 40 students for bioinformatics and about 20 for biotechniques), leading to ~95% placement rates after graduation. Aside from these main courses, the institute offers several modules of short courses to company personnel and others during a year.

Research

Research work by the faculty has led to a bioinformatics tool, ExPrimer, for primer design. It has also led to several publications in international journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Nucleic Acids Research, Bioinformatics and FEBS Journal. A series of articles in the area of Bio-business is also planned for Current Science, of which three have already appeared.

Promoting entrepreneurship

In 2004, the institute received a prestigious grant from the Wadhwani Foundation to promote entrepreneurship. The bioinformatics students take a course in entrepreneurship. In addition, it does research in the areas of patents and company formation. Several companies have availed the incubation services of IBAB.