University of Hyderabad gets Rs 50-crore Central grant for research activities

Hyderabad: The School of Life Sciences at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been sanctioned with a grant of Rs:50.44 crores as part of the "Boost to University Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Department for Education and Research (BUILDER)" program of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India for a period of five years.

The grant will be utilised by the School of Life Sciences to promote interdisciplinary teaching and research in the areas of Bio-resources and innovations; Intra- and inter-cellular communications; Post-translational modifications: Role in pathogen biology and pathogenesis; Molecular cancer therapeutics; Structural, Computational and Systems Biology.

Under this programme, the School has been sanctioned a budget to improve infrastructure, human resources (faculty, technical officers, post-doctoral fellows and research fellows) and Equipment.

The DBT-BUILDER augmented infrastructure facilities will immensely benefit masters and research students, and facilitate high-end research. The support also will be used to offer training programmes in advanced areas of biology besides encouraging student interns from other Institutions.

This grant will be used to upgrade central facilities of the School such as proteomics, metabolomics, genomics, greenhouse, animal house, etc. Continuous training programmes will be organised for the benefit of faculty, masters and research students working in less equipped remotely located universities.

Dean of the School, Prof. S. Dayananda congratulated faculty on this wonderful achievement and expressed their gratitude to founder and superannuated faculty members who have contributed in building a solid interdisciplinary biology school at UoH.

"It's gratifying to see the School of Life Sciences is once again recognised by the DBT under BUILDER program with an excellent grant support. The steady progress made by the School over the last several years with high quality research output has been reflected through the top ranking in Nature Index too.

With this support, I firmly believe that the efforts by the faculty, post docs and the students will further enhance research output and enable the School of Life Sciences to be among the World's best in the years to come", said Prof. Appa Rao Podile, Vice Chancellor, UoH.

The School of Life Sciences was established in 1977 in the University of Hyderabad to serve as a model interdisciplinary academic institution by providing themes that unify diverse research activities of several groups and channelise research activities to understand and explain biological structures and processes.

It currently has a strength of 60 faculty members, around 250 M.Sc/M.Tech/IM.Sc students in various biology and biotechnology disciplines, 350 Ph.D. scholars and 60 post-doctoral fellows.