The immense potential of the IT, life sciences and biotech industries in India and the West has encouraged promotion of corporates which are allying with academia to conduct path-breaking research

The 21st century’s most promising industry, bioinformatics — a marriage of IT (information technology) with life sciences — offers a multiplicity of high-potential and rewarding career options. Currently the annual revenue of the bioinformatics industry worldwide is estimated at $2 billion (Rs.11,031 crore), with exponential growth expected in the next decade, stretching the boundaries of biotechnology from an essentially lab-based science into an information science which will yield rare biological insights, and hasten the discovery of an entire range of new life-saving drugs and pharmaceuticals.

The growth and immense potential of the IT, life sciences and biotech industries in India and the West has encouraged the promotion of a huge number of conglomerates and corporates which are increasingly allying with universities and academic institutions to conduct path-breaking research in this field. Hence life sciences, mathematics, computers, agriculture, medicine and engineering graduates, postgrads and Ph Ds are likely to find a plethora of career options in bioinformatics.

Institutes offering specialised postgraduate programmes in bioinformatics include the Jawaharlal Nehru Bioinformatics Centre, New Delhi; IIT-Kharagpur; University of Pune Bioinformatics Centre, Pune; Osmania University, PGRR Centre for Distance Education, Hyderabad; Amity Institute of Biotechnology, New Delhi; University of Kolkata; Bose Institute, Bioinformatics Centre, Kolkata; Madurai Kamraj University, Bioinformatics Centre, Madurai; Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh; Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore; Bioinformatics Institute of India, Noida; Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies, Kerala; Bharathiar University, Coimbatore; Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirapalli; and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad. Admissions are usually on the basis of an entrance test.

Students acquainted with bioinformatics have numerous job opportunities in this booming industry. Graduates and postgrads with database management skills and capability to collect, store, retrieve, analyse and correlate data to develop new and advanced algorithms, have a particularly bright future in this fast evolving industry.

Remuneration packages for bioinformatics professionals in the West range between $40,000-100,000 (Rs.22-55 lakh) per year given their immense utility in pharmaceutical research. In India, however, bioinformatics is yet to mature and postgrads signing up with private sector pharma companies can expect relatively modest, yet fairly handsome salaries ranging between Rs.200,000-500,000 per annum. Professionals with doctorates could start research labs in various institutes or sign up with pharma companies as research scientists and expect fast-track career growth.

“The bioinformatics sector can expect to grow fast during the next decade as pharmaceutical and medical companies have chalked out ambitious growth plans. With considerable progress in sequencing the complete human genome, there’s a vast amount of knowledge unfolding and employment opportunities are multiplying, specially in the fields of diagnostics and data analysis,” says Pradnya Shelke, co-founder and managing partner of the Mumbai-based Omics Systems, a start-up firm founded in 2011, which provides computational, bioinformatics and consultancy services to the life sciences, pharmaceutical and medical industries.

A life sciences graduate of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College with a Masters in biotechnology from the University of Mumbai, in 2004 Shelke was attracted to the emerging bioinformatics industry, after learning about the human genome and its role in detecting novel genes and proteins to cure a wide range of ailments and diseases. “This awareness prompted me to enroll in a two-year postgrad diploma of the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore which I completed in 2006,” recalls Shelke.

After working as an intern at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for a year, Shelke  worked in the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)-sponsored Enterovirus Research Centre, Haffkine Institute campus, Mumbai for six months and later with the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) of the Tata Memorial Hospital (Mumbai) as a senior research fellow for almost five years, and promoted Omics Systems in 2011. With several research and consulting projects in hand, Shelke also conducts workshops country-wide to acquaint corporates and professionals about emerging trends and opportunities in the evolving bioinformatics industry.

“Employment opportunities for qualified professionals are best in the US and European countries. In India, this is a relatively less developed industry as many senior scientists are not willing to accept bioinformatics as a research-intensive industry despite top universities in the US — including MIT and Harvard — having incorporated bioinformatics into most IT and sciences degree programmes, and running large research projects in collaboration with industry. But it’s only a matter of time before awareness of the importance of this 21st century industry dawns upon India Inc,” says Shelke.

Indra Gidwani (Mumbai)