Courses Offered:

• 5 years integrated M.Sc in Biotechnology
• Ph.D. in Biotechnology

Background and Course Objective:

Post Graduate Department of Biotechnology emphasizes on both teaching and research. Five years integrated course in Biotechnology intends toequip students with theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary Biology and Biotechnology such that they can contribute to the frontier areas in Biotechnology. The Department generates adequate human resources to meet the requirement of trained personnel in the multi-disciplinary field of Biotechnology both in India andin the world.Meritorious students join the department every year. Not only are they excellent in academics, they are at the forefront in extracurricular activities as well, representing the college in the field of sports and performing arts. Every year, many students qualify national level competitive examinations including CSIR-UGC National Eligibility Test (NET), DBT-BET and GATE. After completion most of the students join doctoral research in India or abroad while the others join biotech industries or opt for management studies. The faculty members of the department are actively involved in research in various field like Study of protein folding and aggregation, Epigenetic regulation during DNA damage response, Structurefunction corelationof biomolecular motor assemblies, Plant physiology and biochemistry, Cell biology, Cancer biology etc. Scholars and students present papers in seminars and workshops at national and international levels. The department publishes an annual magazine ‘CHIASMA-Crossing over of mind’. Alongside academic and cultural contributions by the professors, students and the scholars, the magazine also portrays yearly achievements of the department.

Faculty Members of the Department:

Currently the department has following full time faculty members: Dr. Uma Siddhanta, Dr.Sudipa Saha, Dr.Aniruddha Banerji, Dr.Jhimli Dasgupta (HOD), Dr.Ronita Nag Chaudhuri (Lab-in-charge), Dr.Priyanka De, Dr.Souvik Roy,Dr.Sayak Ganguli,Dr.Arindam Bakshi and Dr.Ditipriya Hazra. The department is well equipped with modern laboratories [Details are available in the ‘Teaching and research infrastructure’ section].  Apart from that, Professors and scholars often avail tissue culture facilities, cold lab etc. located at the Central Research Facility of the College. Professors receive financial supports as extramural research grants from the funding agencies like CSIR, UGC, DST(SERB), DAE(BRNS), MHRD-STARS, ICMR, DBT and DBT(IYBA), DBT-WB and DST-WB etc. Some professors have also received prestigious national and international awards [details of research grants and awards are in the profile of the professors]. The department has received and successfully run the infrastructure grant ‘BOOST’ from the DBT-WB during 2014-2017. The Dept.of Biotechnology and Dept. of Microbiology have received another infrastructure grant ‘DBT-BUILDER’ from DBT, India in 2020.

So far, more than15 research scholars have completed their Ph. D under the guidance of the faculty members of the department. Most of those scholars are currently pursuing  post-doctoral research in different prestigious institutes of India and abroad. The University of Calcutta approved the Regulations for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, (Ph. D) under St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata to be awarded for Biotechnology in 2015. At present 16 scholars are pursuing doctoral research under the supervision of the faculty members of the department, presenting their findings at national and international conferences and publishingresearchfindings in international and national peer-reviewed journals. Details of research interests and publications are available in the profile of the faculty members.

Laboratory Staffs of the Department:

Laboratories and the equipment of the Department are efficiently maintained by the staff members Mr.Abhijit Ghoshal (Laboratory assistant), Mr.Rajkumar Dolui (Laboratory attendant) and Mr.Bidesh Makhal (Laboratory attendant).

Ph.D. Scholars of the Department:

Syllabus:

The Integrated M. Sc course in Biotechnology is for the duration of five years (divided into ten semesters) on completion of which a certificate of Master’s Degree in Biotechnology is provided. The course is delivered in the form of formal lectures, practical classes and discussions of recent scientific literature. The visual mode of instruction is liberally used, with powerpoint presentations being used to impart knowledge. As in the study of any science, practicalmodules are of utmost importance. Laboratory visits and field trips are organized for providing students with exposure to current biotechnological techniques and for opportunities to study animal and plant biology and evolution. The students of the final semester (Semester X) get the opportunityto pursue a dissertation project to gather hands-on training on advanced research techniques in various fields of modern biological science.The CBCS curriculum has been introduced from July 2018. The syllabus has been revisited recently to remove the redundancies and theBOS ratified revised syllabus (prepared as per CBCS guideline) will be introduced from July, 2023.

Achievement of the Students:

The academic performance of our students has been brilliant. Every year, many of our students qualify competitive examinations at the national level including CSIR-UGC National Eligibility Test (NET), DBT-BET and GATE (Life Sciences). Further details are available in the ‘Students achievements’ section.

Some of our students have also qualified for/received the prestigious CSIR Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Fellowship. To name a few of them:

• Payel Roy
• Debraj Boila
• Rumela Bose
• Biswendu Biswas
• Krishamoorthi

Our students pursue their research at various institutes of national repute including:

University of Calcutta (Kolkata)

St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata

Bose Institute (Kolkata)

Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (Kolkata)

Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (Kolkata)

IPGMER (Kolkata)

Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata)

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (Kolkata)

National Institute of Immunology (New Delhi)

IIT, Kanpur

IIT, Kharagpur

IIT, Delhi

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) (Mumbai)

National Centre for Cell Sciences (Pune)

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (Hyderabad)

Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore)

National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) (Bangalore)

Many of our students are pursuing further studies/ research in various reputed institutes abroad such as:

• University of Michigan, USA
• University of Texas, USA
• University of Maryland, USA
• University of Georgia, USA
• University of Alabama, USA
• Southern Illinois University, USA
• Pennsylvania State University, USA
• Indiana University Bloomington, USA
• Nebraska Medical Centre, USA
• Drexel University, USA
• Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany)
• University of Manitoba (Canada)

Student activities of pursuing batches:

The department strives to foster holistic student development. Besides academic involvements, the department believes in the implementation of the various student activities through which the student can practice, develop and refine their favourite activities and hobbies. The details of student activities and accomplishments of the current batches are available in the ‘Student Activities’ section.

Research objectives at a glance:

The curriculum of the Post-Graduate Department of Biotechnology is based on inter-disciplinary subject combinations. The research objectives of the department are hence quite diverse and often interdependent. Many of the faculties of the department are involved in high quality research and are regular recipients of Extramural Research Grants and several awards and fellowships. Research done in the department pertain to topics broadly based on “Gaining Structural & Functional insight into proteins involved in bacterial flagellar function and nutritional uptake; Genetic and Epigenetic mechanism of gene regulation during plant development and stress response; Structural and functional analyses of eye lens protein α-crystallin and its role in preventing cataract; Cancer biology; Neurobiology and Cognitive Biology; Clinical/Medical microbiology; Application of genomics and computational biology for analyses of gut microbiome and antibiotic resistant bacteria; Understanding the structure-function relationship of plant viral proteins with approaches involving genomics and protein engineering. The department strives to achieve meaningful outputs through research efforts in the above-mentioned topics in terms of high impact publications.