Introduction

The School was established in December 1998 with major funding from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India. Admission to M. Sc Biotechnology programme is made on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test – Biotechnology (GAT-B) conducted by the Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad. The first batch of students was admitted in Aug 1999. So far more than 300 students have graduated from the most of the students have cleared National tests like NET-JRF (CSIR-UGC), BET-JRF (DBT) and NET-JRF (ICMR) and GATE. Many of the students have been placed in the most prestigious research institutes across the globe for pursuing Ph.D and Post-doctoral studies. Apart from this the students have also been placed in various Government Departments of the J&K UT and at National level and also in the private sector. The School follows the course curriculum prescribed by the DBT for M.Sc. Biotechnology. School houses three M.Sc. laboratories and two Central facility laboratories which are fully equipped to conduct Practicals prescribed in the curricula. The School also houses seven research laboratories wherein all the necessary facilities and sophisticated equipment have been placed.

The School has been awarded with DST-FIST, DST-PURSE (phase-2), RUSA fundings. The high-end facilities housed in the School include GC-MS, Bioprocess Facility, Cold room, Walk-in-Chamber, Real Time PCR, HPTLC, FTIR, HPLC system, Animal cell culture facility, Green House, Plant Tissue Culture facility etc. The faculty has been able to attract extra-mural funding from the National and International funding agencies (DBT, ICMR, DST, UGC, CSIR, NMPB, DRDO). All the laboratories and faculty rooms have been networked through LAN. The School has been connected with the University server with fibre optics line so as to avail the online access to the journals provided through the UGC-INFLIBNET. The School has very active faculty, research scholar and staff, all contributing selflessly to the growth and development of the School. The research interests of the School are varied, ranging from Plant genomics, Microbial genomics to Cancer biology, Fungal Biotechnology, Industrial Enzymes, Bioactive compounds, Drug delivery Nanotechnology, Immunogenomics, Metagenomics and Metabolomics. A wide-ranging research interests combined with excellent facilities and encouraging atmosphere provide an environment for enthusiastic exchange of ideas among researchers.