The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Basic Sciences was established in the year 2006. The reason for its establishment was a realization of the fact that each modern development in biology has its roots in basic sciences. In order to achieve its goal the Centre has both basic scientists and life scientists as faculty members who are doing research in modern areas of life sciences. There are 13 faculty members; a few of them have received significant professional recognitions. Being an interdisciplinary research centre our faculty members are divided into self-selected research programmes in thrust areas such as Protein Folding Problem, Structure Biology, Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Nano-biotechnology, Bioimaging using SPM, Medicinal Chemistry, Molecular Biology, Virology, and Molecular Reproduction Biology. The size of our research programme allows the Centre to provide challenging research experiences to our students and researchers. The Centre offers two semesters extensive pre-Ph D course of 24 credits (16 credits of theory courses and 8 credits of practical courses). The purpose of this course is to prepare basic scientists (M.Sc. in chemistry/ physics/ mathematics/ computer science), and life scientists (M.Sc. in all branches of biology) to pursue interdisciplinary research in the novel areas of biological sciences. This is achieved by introducing courses from life sciences to basic scientists and courses from basic sciences to life scientists during their pre-Ph.D. course work. This is a unique feature of the Centre, which is available only in a few Indian universities. We make every effort to integrate our educational programmes into research programmes for both graduate and post-graduate students. The research experience of our faculty members is brought to the classroom, giving students a sense of the excitement and the cutting edge nature of the discipline. In addition, the Centre is committed to provide short term (3 months) and long term (6 months) research trainings to national and international students and research facilities to researchers who are deprived of such facilities for extended periods. The research grants brought by our faculty members are important in supporting research and training programmes of the Centre. As a whole, the faculty members are pursuing major research projects worth 5 crores funded by various national and international funding agencies and have published more than 150 papers in peer reviewed journals in the last three years.

• To promote interdisciplinary scientific research, advanced teaching and training in chosen areas of interdisciplinary basic sciences leading to M. Phil and PhD degrees;
• To provide a forum for interaction among scientists, research workers, teachers and students with national and international experts;
• To provide research facilities to individual workers or research groups, especially to those who are deprived of such facilities for extended periods;
• To create tenure-based short term and long term chairs and visiting positions for experts in identified areas for interaction with the Centers’ faculty, carrying out research and exchange of ideas; and
• To conduct seminars, workshops, conferences and extension lectures to promote interdisciplinary research in basic sciences.