Summer Internship Program on Modern Biology and Bioinformatics

The Department of Biology and the Centre for Computation Biology & Bioinformatics, at Ashoka University conducted a week-long internship program (19th to 25th June, 2022) in biological sciences with a strong focus on cell, molecular, and computational biology. Sixteen undergraduate students, selected from about 200 applicants, participated in the program. The participants were from all across the country.

The training program was initiated with an insightful keynote address by Prof Anurag Agarwal, Dean Trivedi School of Bioscience on the future of biomedical sciences titled “Technology, society and the future of Health”, where he explored the importance of integration of data sciences, artificial intelligence, and principles of biology to address public-health problems. This was followed by lectures on microscopy, gene-editing and neuropathology. The students also received hands-on training in Drosophila behavioural experiments, immunostaining, image analysis, flow cytometry, computational genomics and bioinformatics. In the span of a week, the interns received exposure to a wide range of interdisciplinary thematic areas that the biology department of Ashoka University specializes in. The summer program was supported by the Trivedi School of Biological Sciences and the Centre for Computation Biology & Bioinformatics which is funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.