IBU organised National Symposium
Aligarh : The Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University organized a National Symposium cum Workshop on “Tools and Techniques for prediction of antimicrobial resistance” sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, New Delhi under the ongoing DBT research project entitled “Exploring antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by omics approaches (Bioinformatics, Genomics and Proteomics) sanctioned to Prof Asad U Khan.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof Tariq Mansoor was the Chief Patron of the Webinar.
The Chief Guest, Prof VM Katoch (Former Secretary, Govt. of India and former DG, ICMR, New Delhi) presided over the inaugural session. In his address, he discussed the global emergence of antibiotic resistance and its need to control it. Praising AMU he said, it is one of the prestigious universities, which is capable of contributing by addressing global crises on AMR.
The Dean Faculty of Life Sciences, Prof Wasim Ahmad appreciated the progress of the Faculty and mentioned that the Biotechnology unit is one of the flagship departments and its role in the Faculty of Life Sciences ranking. He emphasized the importance of holding such symposiums in the time of global pandemics.
Prof Asad U Khan, convener of the national symposium, in his welcome address, talked about the current scenario of the emergence of antimicrobial resistance and the progress of the department to achieve goals to control crises of drug resistance.
The inaugural session was ended by a vote of thanks by Dr Hina Younus. The technical session was initiated by a Keynote address by an eminent scholar, Prof. JS Viridi, Dept. of Microbiology, University of Delhi. He talked about a point of care (POC) test for the detection system of AMR in bacteria.
The second speaker, Dr Alessandra Piccirilli from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, discussed next-generation sequencing to detect antimicrobial resistance genes in carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales while, Dr Manish Kumar, Dept of Biophysics, University of Delhi talked about In-silico tools for the study of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria.
Around 100 participants from different parts of the country attended the webinar and Prof Waseem Siddiqui, the coordinator of IBU, concluded the webinar and extended a vote of thanks. Ms Ayesha Zainab Beg, researcher scholar of IBU conducted the proceedings.