Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Department of Chemistry has organized a lecture session on Chemoinformatics. Dr. M. Karthikeyan, Scientist at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, delivered a lecture on Role of Chemoinformatics in Academics and Industry at a programme.
Prof. Karthikeyan has highlighted the opportunities for students and faculties of chemistry. He also said that Chemoinformatics basically helps to design chemicals with desired properties and also guide us about 'what to make' and 'how to make'. Moreover, he added that the subject is very popular around the globe, especially in USA, UK, Canada, Japan and Europe. A lot of job opportunities and research positions are available in those countries.
Furthermore, he mentioned that in US, about five thousand people are involved in this field of study and they earn approximately 3000 crore rupees per annum. India also has several big companies like Jubilant Biosys, GE, GVK-Hyderabad, Ranbaxy, Lupin, Parimal, Advinus, Chembiotech, Tata Chemicals etc that have separate departments for Chemoinformatics.
Dr. Karthikeyan said that in academics, a Bachelor's course (B.Sc. level) in Chemoinformatics is already functional in south India at Lady Dock College for Women, where students are pursuing M.Sc. and PhD in Chemoinformatics. He urged that courses in Chemoinformatics should also be started at different institutes and universities in India.
He also informed that there are several JRF positions available in Chemoinformatics for the students with chemistry, biology, computer science background. Unfortunately, due to lack of knowledge and experience, the students were not available for these positions. He urged AMU's Department of Chemistry to begin a course in this field of education. He also clarified that the combination of Chemoinformatics and Bioinformatics allows studying the problems in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and drug design with a battery of specific methods.
