Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Feb 12, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Feb 12, 2004 |
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Info-Tech
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Alliances & Joint Ventures Sun, CDFD set up medical bioinformatics centre Our Bureau
Mr. Seyed Hasnain, Director, CDFD, greeting Ms Kim Jones Vice-President, Global Education Research, Sun Microsystems Inc, and Mr Andrew Lim (left), Director, (South Asia), Global Education Research, Sun Microsystems, after signing an MoU in Hyderabad on Wednesday. - - A. Roy Chowdhury
Hyderabad , Feb. 11 SUN Microsystems Inc, the $12-billion technology major, and the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), have come together to establish a medical bioinformatics centre, considered to be the first such facility in the country with an initial investment of about $5 million. Simultaneously, this centre is expected to serve as a national node for Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) to promote bioinformatics education and have connectivity with similar centres of excellence across the globe while focussing on drug discovery, gene therapy-related research using a network of computers in a grid system. The Director of CDFD, Dr Seyed E. Hasnain, said that the centres of excellence (CoE) would expand the scope of research in the areas of diagnostics, nanobiology and host of medical applications. Right from establishing the exclusivity of basmati rice and handling issues relating to new-born babies, the scope of research has been expanded. This advanced computing environment would enable the centre to take up new lines of research where huge processing power and data analysis work could now be handled. The Managing Director of Sun Micro India, Mr Bhaskar Pramanik, said that the company invests about $2 billion per annum into R&D, both on its own and through strategic arrangements and the centre of excellence in medical bioinformatics is yet another such initiative of the company. Sun had earlier established a competency centre for Java in India at CMC Ltd, partnering with the Department of Electronics, the National Association of Software and Services Copanies and CMC. This centre, which is to be housed in a recently developed Rs 30 crore facility adjacent the picturesque Gandipet lake near Hyderabad, forms the ninth major CoE of the Sun in the world and the first established in India for medical informatics. The infrastructure of CoE would be characterised by the presence of high performance computing hardware and optimised software to cater to needs of regional biological community. CDFD, an autonomous institution under the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, provides services in DNA fingerprinting, diagnostics and bioinformatics. This centre has found a place among premier research institutes of the country in the areas of molecular biology, genetics and computational and structural biology. Taking forward, CDFD is expected to create an India bio-grid and link up with the European Molecular Biology Network, the Asia-Pacific Bionetwork as also serve as the regional node for the Department of Biotechnology.
More Stories on : Alliances & Joint Ventures | Bio-tech & Genetics | Software
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