BIO INFORMATICS IN NORTH EAST

Rs. 70 crores waiting to be utilized by bioinformatics centres of NE

GANGTOK, November 12: Presently Rs.70 crores are waiting to be utilized by the bioinformatics centre of the Northeast region in this current financial year, a senior functionary of the Department of Bioinformatics, Union Ministry of Science and Technology said today.
“The department is very keen to promote and support the 25 bioinformatics centre in Northeast and have earmarked a fund of Rs. 90 crores exclusively for this region”, said Dr. T Madan Mohan, Advisor of the Department of Bioinformatics during the opening session of the two day interactive meet for bioinformatics centre of Northeast here at the Chintan Bhavan here.
Representatives from Northeast centres and educational institutes are attending this meet organized by Sikkim State Council of Science and Technology.
“Out of the earmarked Rs.90 crores, we have utilized only Rs.20 crores in the initial stages. Rs. 70 crores still remains to be utilized and we are waiting for good proposals from the bioinformatics centres of Northeast for financial support”, said Dr. Mohan.
The institutions can apply for various programmes of the department like Centres of Excellence, Public Private partnership programmes, medical, agricultural, environmental, HRD and bioinformatics infrastructure development, he said.
The two day meet will deliberate on the status of the bioinformatics centres in Northeast and discus ideas for strengthening these centres.
“The purpose of this meeting is to review the activities and extend possible guidelines for future activities to these centres. They will be having the advantage of interacting with over 150 institutions which are spread across the nation through the network of BTISnet”, Dr. Mohan said.
Dr. Mohan also informed about the proposal to have all the North East bioinformatics centre under one umbrella and the network of this centre is named as North Eastern Bioinformatics Network which would be part of the major BTISnet of the department.

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