2nd Day of National Conference on Microbial Biotechnology, 2015

Chandigarh, January 23, 2015: The second day of the National Conference on Microbial Biotechnology MICROCON 2015 focused on discussions about the applications of Industry-Institute Interactions and Designer Microbes/Enzymes.

The three day National Conference is being organised by the PU Department of Microbial Biotechnology at Golden Jubilee Hall. Two sessions were held today.

Session on ‘Industry Academia interactions’ was chaired by Punjab Biotech Incubator, Mohali Dr. S.S. Marwaha. Panjab University was appreciated at being one of the 5 universities of the country to be awarded the University Innovation Cluster (UIC) which will provide immense support and opportunities to students and young entrepreneurs.

MD, FITT, IIT-Delhi, New Delhi Dr. Anil Wali spoke on building techno-entrepreneurial ecosystem in a University.

He said that ‘PU has the capability to be developed and known as an entrepreneurial University’. Dr. S.S. Marwaha said that Punjab was declared as a

model for development of a knowledge city in the field of biotechnology and is soon expected to see a boom in the development of the same.

COO, C-CAMP, Bengaluru Dr. Taslimarif Sayeed by aptly exemplifying C-CAMP, said it is important to generate a critical mass of people and institutions by way of innovation clusters which are the actual driving partners which will take innovations and hence economy on the right road ahead. Dr. Muthu Singaram, Founder, VibaZone, Malayasia  discussed the principles and practices of public research institute-industry partnerships in technology transfer/licensing and how it can promote entrepreneurship.

 Amitesh Suman, ABLE, Bangalore suggested ways of accelerating India’s Bio-economy and stated that India’s 5 billion dollar bio-pharma industry can be plummeted to a 100 billion dollar industry by 2025, if a structured growth path was followed.

The session on designer enzymes was chaired by Dr. RS Sangwan, CEO of Centre of Innovative and Applied Bio Processing Unit (BPU), Mohali. Dr Sangwan focussed on applied research developments and highlighted some cutting edge research that is going on in the country. P. Guptasarma, IISER, Mohali spoke about designer enzymes and protein sculpting.  Deepak Sharma, IMTECH, Chandigarh, discussed the possibilities of protein engineering for the treatment of  diseases like Parkinsons and Alzhimers. Dr. RakeshSharma, IGIB, New Delhi emphasised on the possibilities of treatments for Mycobacterium smegmatis infections.

Earlier, the day began on a high spirited note and the two sessions saw participation and discussions from high profile speakers and scientists from India and abroad.

(SK Vyas/Jalandhar)