National Pharmacy Teachers Training Programme begins at PU

Chandigarh: A one week web faculty training school, on “Training Pharmacy Professionals to Accomplish Mission – Make in India: Step Forth to Promote Academic Entrepreneurship” from 18 to 23 January 2021 was inaugurated today at the University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Panjab University Chandigarh, for pharma faculty participants across the country under the initiative of UGC Networking Resource Centre (NRC).
 
A total of 31 participants were selected for training, hailing from various Colleges/Universities, representing 12 different states of India. The training school started today i.e. January 18, 2021 through Cisco WebEx Events, with an aim to familiarize the participants to the various tasks under “Make in India Mission” and to craft an Entrepreneur culture within an academic Institution through stimulating lectures from leading scientists and academicians who have contributed significantly in their respective domains. The leading topics in the programme shall include: Creating a start-up ecosystem in academic institutions; Networking solutions and opportunities; Funding options, angel investors and government schemes to own and sustain incubation centres, startups at university levels; Success stories, experiential learnings and case studies; Developing leadership skills; Encouraging participants to take up nano based research and Exposing participants to the state of art technologies, softwares, innovations and equipments in the field of pharmacy specially nanopharmaceuticals.
Professor Indu Pal Kaur, Chairperson, UIPS and Programme Coordinator, UGC-NRC welcomed the participants and briefed them about the achievements of UIPS and UGC-NRC programmes.

Dr Abhay Jere, Chief  Innovation Officer (CIO), Innovation Cell, Ministry of Education, Govt. of India, in his Key Note Address on "Building Innovation Ecosystem in our Higher Education Institutes” highlighted the need for this transformational research. He stressed upon creating an island of ideas, to build in an ecosystem to create a start-up culture in Higher education Institutes. He also discussed about Hon’ble Prime Minister Modi’s dream of Atma-nirbhar Bharat, and inspired all the participants to take up entrepreneurship very passionately and quoted that “failure if the batch of honor”. The more are the failures; more are the investors confident about the success of the startup. His talk was very well appreciated by all participants and the panelists.

Professor Ranju Bansal, Dean Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, addressed the participants and motivated them with her words of inspiration on academic entrepreneurship.

Professor O. P. Katare, Course Coordinator, summarized about the course content to the participants and Dr Vandita Kakkar, Joint Course Coordinator conducted the proceedings of the event.

Professor V. R. Sinha, Dean Research, Panjab University, shared his Words of Wisdom.
 
Subsequent sessions included a lecture on the theme i.e. “Training Pharmacy Professionals to Accomplish Mission – Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat: Step Forth to Promote Academic Entrepreneurship” by Professor Saranjit Singh, Ex-Dean, NIPER and Head, Pharmaceutical Analysis, Mohali, Punjab. The post-lunch session by Dr Rohit Sharma, Chairperson, Department of Microbial Biotechnology & Chief Coordinator & Project Leader, Cluster Innovation Centre in Biotechnology & BioNEST, Panjab University, Chandigarh and a few of his team members on the “Science at the core of Innovation Ecosystem”.

UIPS is the first and the only Pharmacy Institute in the country selected by MHRD for creating UGC Networking Resource Centre to promote and foster research and academics in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences by training young pharma trainers, selected across the nation.