Good infrastructure and great performance by students make the biotechnology course at the University of Kashmir as one of the best in the country

The Department of Biotechnology at the University of Kashmir was started in 2000 with an objective of attracting talented and well-trained faculties from diverse disciplines of biology to impart quality training in biotech education and research. The department is funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Over the period of time, the department has grown in stature to be recognized as one among the top 10 biotech schools of the country for the quality of faculties and infrastructure.

The department offers MSc in biotechnology with a student intake of 15 every year. The program is based on a curriculum that covers right from the basics in biotechnology to advanced fields like signaling biology, transcription biology, neurobiology and genetics. Currently, the department has seven full-time faculty members. The research program of the department is based on investigating most modern and relevant fields of biotechnology leading to the award of MPhil or PhD degrees.

The department boasts of publications in high impact journals coupled with the performance of students in national and international examinations like NET, GATE, ICMR and GRE and their placement in organizations of international repute. The research area for the biotech department comprises four well-designed state-of-the-art research laboratories, animal cell culture facility, plant cell culture facility, radioactivity lab, dark room and a conference room separated from independent facilities available for the post-graduate program. Two well-equipped laboratories are allotted for training post-graduates. The department also has a state-of-the-art bioinformatics facility that caters to the requirements of students and researchers alike. In total, there are 11 labs in the department that are used for different purposes.

The department has also received the recruitment offers from the top companies such as Medley Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme and Anatara Biosciences. Since 2000, about 73 research papers from the department have been published in international journals.

The department is fully-equipped with the infrastructure required to perform quality research in most areas of biotechnology. Most modern facilities for research in molecular biology and cell biology (for both animal and plant) are there at the university with international standards.