Ocimum partners Michigan University for bioinformatics

HYDERABAD: Ocimum Biosolutions Ltd., a Hyderabad based bioinformatics

solutions provider with operations both in US as well as India has announced a

partnership with Michigan Technological University. As per the conditions of the

agreement, Michigan tech will provide a certificate on course completion for

each individual completing a 20-week Bioinformatics course at Ocimum with a

passing designation.

"We are targeting students from IT as well as life science background

for the course as bioinformatics is a mix of both of these fields. The course is

priced at Rs 75,000 and we have already finished two batches of 15 students

each, we are hoping that this course will generate good bioinformaticians in

India," said Ocimum CEO, Anuradha Acharya.

With a course content exclusively designed for Ocimum by the faculty at MTU,

this course enables students to develop proficiency in Genomics, Sequence

analysis, functional bioinformatics and proteomics. "Students will also get

exposure to Ocimum’s indigenously developed bioinformatics tools as

well," she added.

Ocimum Biosolutions started its operations in India in March, 2001 with an

investment of more than $ 200,000. "We are also in the process of

developing bioinformatics products and in about three to four months we are

going to launch Genchek- a bioinformatics tool," Anuradha explained.