The Department of Biotechnology at Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla was established in the year 1995 to begin a M.Sc. Biotechnology Program with funding from the Department of Biotechnology (Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, New Delhi) with an intake of 10 students. The State Government and Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, New Delhi provided the major financial supports. The Department is presently running two years M. Sc. Degree Programs in Biotechnology (since-1995), Microbiology (since-2007), One year Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) Research Degree in Biotechnology (since-2005) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biotechnology (since 1997). The Department presently admits 30 candidates every year to M.Sc. Biotechnology course through Graduate Aptitude Test- Biotechnology (GAT-B) conducted by Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad on behalf of Department fo Biotechnology, Govt. of India, New Delhi for the participating Universities and all students receive scholarship of Rs. 5,000/- p.m. from DBT, Govt. of India. The fee structure in HP University is very less in comparison to other participating Universities. For M.Sc. in Microbiology, every year 30+2 students are admitted under self-financing scheme (SFS) through an Entrance Test conducted by HP University, Shimla. Two seats are specially reserved for single girl child as per HPU Rules.
As a result of the tremendous efforts and hard work by the dedicated facultyand strong academic and industry oriented research programme, the Department has created a niche in academics and research at National and Internationale levels. The highly trained Faculty of Biotechnology has excelled in various fields of Biotechnology and Microbiology through Major Research Grants from various funding agencies and has immensely contributed in creating and maintaining the state-of-the-art high quality infrastructure in the form of excellent Lecture Halls, Teaching and Research laboratories, Central Instumentation Labs, IT-Lab., Departmental Library with 1710 books and access to Inflibnet/e-resources, Seminar Hall, and excellent facilities to impart practical training to the students to keep high standards in research and to generate highly skilled human resource. The Department has identified ‘industrial enzymes and processes’ as the major thrust area of research. The major objectives in research and academic activities include:
- Exploration and conservation of microbial diversity of Himachal Pradesh.
- Enzymes, fermentation technology and probiotics
- Exploring extremophiles for novel enzymes and products, and
- Exploring rich biodiversity of medicinal & aromatic plants for active principle (s)
The Department provides the students with excellent research platform and exposure in the thrust areas of Recombinant DNA & Enzyme Technology, Molecular Biology, Animal Biotechnology, Plant Biotechnology, Environmental Biotechnology Industrial Biotechnology, Fermentation Technology and Bioinformatics. The course curriculum is best suited to meet the demand of academia and industry and is updated from time to time. The Department has also signed MOUs with various Industrial houses and is also running industry sponsored projects.M.Phil and Ph.D. program is also run by the Department in the mentioned thrust area. Nearly 90% of our postgraduate students qualify national tests like CSIR/UGC, ICMR, DBT,GATE, ICAR fellowships and few of them have secured a very high ranking including all India GATE topper and SPM fellowship. The core faculty is experienced, expert in the respective fields and have wide recognition nationally as well as internationally. Besides core faculty, eminent personalities from academia, industry and corporate and social sectors are invited to deliver lectures to the students. Our alumni have joined IITs, IISc, ICGEB, NII, NCL, NIH, NLM, UCSC, UCDAVIS, and various other prestigious institutes and industries like Novozyme, GE Healthcare, Monsanto, Xceleris, Metahelix Life Sciences Limited, Premas Lifescience etc., Unnati Foods, AniSri Technogies, Boston-USA, BioCleansers, HP and so on. The placement record of each outgoing batch has also been excellent, with the students successfully gaining positions in nationally as well as internationally renowned institutions in various areas of life sciences.Few of our alumni have established themselves as successful entreprenuers within India and in Europe and USA.
