The Government of India and the UNESCO fully realizing the need of training and education for generating interdisciplinary human resource relevant to biotechnology, took a joint decision to establish the Regional Centre for research, training and education in biotechnology under the auspices of UNESCO. Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Shri Kapil Sibal today announced the setting up of UNESCO Regional Centre for Biotechnology at its first meeting of the Board of Governors held in New Delhi. The centre will come up in Faridabad, Haryana by next year.

Interacting with the media on the occasion, Shri Sibal said that the Centre would be beneficial to all countries in the region including India in developing knowledge-rich highly skilled human resource, harmonization of policies & procedures in biotechnology and indirectly promoting trade. Biotechnology being essentially global, the partnerships are as much within as across countries. 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.

Secretary, DBT, Dr. Bhan said that the primary focus of the UNESCO Regional Center for Biotechnology is to provide high quality human resource of an interdisciplinary nature and in areas of acute shortage. As education and training of world class quality requires a research milieu, the research in the proposed center will also be an interface of multiple disciplines and focused on technology development. He said that the educational programmes of the UNESCO Centre are designed to create opportunities for students to engage in research where they learn the tools by integrating science, engineering and medicine to provide health care solutions for human and animal sector, for agriculture and environment technologies.

Mr. M. Barbosa, Deputy Director General, UNESCO and Smt. Bhaswati Mukherjee, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO also spoke on the occasion.

The unique activities at the Centre will include Science & Technology expertise building for physicians intending to enter biology; short term medicine exposure to biologists and engineers by networking through local hospitals/ medical schools and short term training in platform technologies for skill development in existing personnel. Specialized domain-specific programmes will also be created in new opportunity areas such as Cell & Tissue Engineering, Nano and biosciences, synergy of information technology and advanced biomaterials to create a cadre of highly specialized people who integrate across disciplines. An important focus of expertise building will be regulation, product development, scale up, manufacturing science and bio-entrepreneurship. The Centre will also provide user friendly opportunities for career development and will also be open to industry for enhancing their skills in specific areas required for career advancement. The Centre will have adequate infrastructure for scale-up and process engineering.

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt of India has decided to set up a unique Health Biotech Science Cluster (HBSC) at Faridabad on a 200 acre plot of land in the National Capital Region (NCR) and will co-locate the UNESCO Regional Centre for Biotechnology (URCB) and the Translational Health Science Technology Institute (THSTI). A number of other related Centres to be co-located at the cluster are at conceptual stage. The Cluster will facilitate synergizing high value resources and infrastructure, coordinated development and maximize societal benefits.

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 design and processes of the education at this Centre will be such that it will generate technology savvy solution finders/creators; science entrepreneurs/ knowledge economy entrepreneurs and R&D leaders.

Interdisciplinary Ph. D. programme of the UNESCO Regional Centre for Biotechnology aims at producing a highly specialized cadre of scientists capable of translating laboratory research to clinical practice with detailed knowledge of both medicine and practice of scientific investigations. 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.

The Centre will be able to produce highly trained and skilled human resource in interdisciplinary areas of biotechnology, and a new cadre of professionals with expertise in relevant areas, enabling them towards delivery of low cost, effective and penetrative technologies in health care, agriculture and veterinary sciences. The centre’s success in delivering the objectives will need vital support from states of the region and UNESCO’s support in terms of both finances and programme development.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : February 26, 2009