Modern college gets ₹2.5 cr

The Progressive Education Society’s Modern College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Ganeshkind, recently became the only college in the city to get the Government of India’s department of biotechnology’s DBT-Builder Scheme grant this year.

The college will spend the Rs 2.5 crore grant on research projects involving students and will conduct research-centered workshops aimed at better education.

The Modern College is one of the nine colleges in India and one of the two colleges in Maharashtra, the other being Mumbai’s Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College, to receive the grant this year. The college is expected to use the grant for interdisciplinary teaching and research in areas of stress biology and biotechnology, anti-microbial resistance and combating it with natural products via green nanotechnology approaches as well as fish biodiversity and its conservation strategies in the Western Ghats.

Programme coordinator Dr Vinay Kumar said the grant is a boost for the department, teachers and students. “The grant provides an opportunity to learn and explore advanced bioscience areas like miRNA-mediated regulation of stress responses and adaptations in plants as well as threatening drug resistance in community microbes and tackling it with advanced nanomaterials and natural products. Understanding how plants adapt and react to stress will help a great deal in responding better to the changes we see in the environment,” he said.

The DBT Schemes Boost to University Interdisciplinary Life Science Departments for Education and Research (Builder) from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, is a coveted grant given to a select few. The sanctioned budget will be utilised to improve infrastructural facilities, human resources in terms of research fellows and organising training programmes and workshops in advanced areas of biology and biotechnology for faculty members and students.

Programme coordinator Dr Vinay Kumar (above) said the grant is a boost for the department, teachers and students, and will provide all with an opportunity to learn and explore advanced bioscience areas

Final year MSc student Abhijit Murde feels elated at having gotten the opportunity to work on a Builder grant research. “It is a deviation from the regular curriculum and boosts my educational experience. There is no limit to what I could research or new techniques that I could learn under it. It is a life-changing experience,” he told Mirror.

Murde did his research under the guidance of assistant professor Dr Snehal Gagare Shirke, who said the grant would go a long way to provide financial assistance for the equipment needed. “Our study looks at microbial diversity screening in freshwater fish in the Pune region — to diagnose their diseases at early stages. This will also help aqua culturists in the long run. The DNA sampling for the research is currently being outsourced, but the other equipment is costly given how sterile the environment has to be. The grant goes to show that we are headed in the right direction and it is motivating,” she said.

Principal of Modern College Dr Sanjay Kharat is also a part of the microbial fish research. He said, “I am honoured and happy that the college has been awarded this one-ofa-kind prestigious scheme. Under the guidance and support of the parent body, and the chairman, Dr G R Ekbote, the activities proposed under the Builder programme will further enable us to be amongst the best centres for life science training and research,” he added.