We at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with the help of other Faculty members, Computer Scientists and Statisticians have designed modular online courses in Bioinformatics. The aim of the course would be to develop expert personnel with practical knowledge in biological data analysis enabling them to deal with biological problems computationally.
Big data has become a driver in pharmaceutical, biotech and agricultural R&D, due to low-cost sequencing and related high-throughput technologies. By using the large volumes of public information available from research in public databases, scientists are able to understand and solve major challenges in health, agriculture and the environment. Trained bioinformaticians can analyze and make sense of other people’s data. One can also perform research on protein structure and function. In addition, there is a reward in being able to biologically identify and validate drug targets using computational tools. Therefore, it is essential that we gather knowledge in the Science which allows us to handle and analyze big-data related to biological problems. Bioinformatics is however, a multidisciplinary Science requiring Knowledge of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Microbiology, Statistics and most importantly Computer Science or programming skills. Available expertise is scattered under various Disciplines. cBLAST is bringing this under one roof together with experts from different fields, who have prepared the voiced-lectures and online quizzes. Workshops and research projects are also a part of this endeavor.