New Delhi, March 29, 2004

A "super" initiative: NIIT and IIT's Supercomputing Facility join hands to develop new Bioinformatic program

The Supercomputing Facility of India's premier Technology Institution, IIT Delhi and IT Education Pioneer, NIIT have joined hands to create an intensive learning Program for the Sunrise Bioinformatics field.

The cutting-edge curriculum to be offered, under the aegis of Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi, will equip a select number of Science post graduates to build exciting careers in the fast growing world of Bioinformatics. Engineering and Medicine graduates will also be eligible to enroll for this unique program.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof. R. S. Sirohi, Director, IIT, Delhi said, "The new millennium has ushered in rapid advances in bio-sciences, creating a deluge of information on genomics and proteomics with several scientific and technological challenges and opportunities. Any progress in this direction is of immediate relevance to society. The quest to meet these challenges creates a huge demand for highly skilled Bioinformatics professionals. IIT Delhi is happy to partner with NIIT, the institution that re-defined the way IT Education was delivered, to create a revolution of perhaps a bigger magnitude."

International Data Corporation has estimated that IT spending in Bio-Sciences will cross USD 138 million in India by 2005. The world-wide spend on use of IT in Bioinformatics is also likely to spiral upwards with estimates of USD 20 billion by 2007.

Reasserting the complementary nature of the formal and non-formal education systems, NIIT Chairman Mr. Rajendra S. Pawar said, "NIIT's association with IIT Delhi in the area of Bioinformatics is a reiteration of our commitment to prepare career aspirants for emerging technology professions."

At the IIT Supercomputing facility: NIIT Chairman Mr. Rajendra S Pawar and Prof. R. S. Sirohi, Director, IIT, Delhi do a walk-through

Spread over 6-months, the Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology includes thorough training in Fundamentals of Modern Biology, IT and hands on training in Bioinformatics on the Supercomputer. While the Bioinformatics modules would be offered at IIT, the IT modules would be delivered at NIIT's Centres of Excellence in high-end training. The Supercomputing facility of IIT Delhi has the best computing infrastructure in the Bioinformatics learning space in the country.

Dr. A. K. Sengupta, Managing Director, FITT said, "NIIT's experience in providing software and learning solutions to a wide spectrum of domains enables it to create and deliver industry standard relevant skills. This partnership will help leverage NIIT's expertise in building an intellectual pool of trained professionals for Bioinformatics."

The pace of current developments and projections present information oriented new biology as the next wave in scientific development, thereby indicating their increased dependence on informatics and extensive use of computational technologies. Given the IT and mathematical skills of Indian students, the expectations from the country are quite high.

Prof. B. Jayaram, Coordinator, Supercomputing Facility said, "The highly interdisciplinary nature of Bioinformatics calls for specialized training programs. Together with NIIT, we made an earnest attempt to put together a comprehensive program that includes hands-on experience on the Supercomputer.

"The students will get an opportunity to learn with those who have developed some original indigenous software for genome analysis, protein structure prediction and in silico drug design," he added.

Companies involved in the innovative development of drugs, agricultural products, genetically modified crops, plastics, petroleum derivatives, medical and forensic tool kits are developing Bioinformatics divisions which are providing research avenues.

Prospective employers include pharmaceutical companies, R&D organizations, academic institutions, software companies & product marketing companies. Several potential opportunities also exist as Entrepreneurs, Scientists, Researchers, Software developers, Database Developers, Consultants and Trainers.

What is Bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics is an emerging interdisciplinary area of Science & Technology encompassing a systematic development and application of IT solutions to biological data collection and warehousing, data base searches, analyses and interpretation, modeling and product design.

This involves the discovery, development and implementation of computational algorithms and software tools that facilitate an understanding of the biological processes. Applications encompass development of personalized medicine, increasing the nutritional content and volume of the agricultural produce, implanting disease resistance and several other spin-offs.

The Supercomputing Facility at IIT Delhi
The Supercomputing Facility for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SCFBio), created in 2002 with funding from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), to promote Indian contributions to advances in genomics, proteomics and drug design through research and training programmes and indigenous software development. The facility has already developed a comprehensive indigenous computational protocol for in silico drug design ("Sanjeevini") and novel methodologies for protein structure prediction and genome analysis.

It is further planned to put the facility on Biogrid-India a virtual private network of the DBT to enable access by student and scientific community from different parts of the country engaged in Bioinformatics research.

The facility currently hosts an aggregate compute power of 150 billion operations per second and can store data up to 1.5 Terabytes.

Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT Delhi
FITT is an autonomous registered society and an interface organization established by IIT Delhi in 1992 to provide a single window service to industry drawing upon IIT Delhi as a primary source. The focus of activities in FITT is on technology transfer, technology development, continuing education, research partnership with industry and information support services.

About NIIT Training
NIIT, a leading Global IT solutions corporation provides learning, software and knowledge solutions to customers in Asia Pacific, Europe, India, Japan and the USA.

NIIT, which pioneered IT training in India in 1981, today operates in 31 countries and its distinct education programs include: 'Planetworkz'--an IT Enabled Services (ITES) industry-endorsed initiative to address the manpower needs of the growing ITES industry in India; Futurz--A series of courses of varying duration including CareerEdge and GNIIT; CATS--Curriculum for Advanced Technologies Studies--for training on advanced technologies; SWIFT--Short Work Programs in Information Technology, which caters to the literacy needs of people keen to learn computers; Maximedia--range of programs on multimedia and eGurucool--addressing the K-12 curriculum support market through Study Assistance Programs.

NetVarsity--the e-learning portal offers a distinctive blend of content, technology and services while NIIT@School provides IT education to 900,000 students in over 2000 government and private schools.

NIIT brand has been included in the highly coveted 'Superbrands' listing from India, by the Superbrands Council. NIIT is the first and the only Asian Education and Training Organization to feature among the IDC Top 20 Global IT training market leaders in 2002.

For further details, please contact:
Ms Geetanjali Sharma, NIIT Ltd., Ph: 011 26203377; Fax: 011 26203386; Email: geetanjalis@niit.com
Or
Ms Lata Narayanan, Joint Coordinator for the Certificate Program, Supercomputing Facility for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, 3rd Floor, Synergy Building, Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India. Ph: 26596786
Or
Visit www.niit.com, www.fitt-iitd.org, www.iitd.ac.in