BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government has urged universities and research institutions of the State to come forward and establish Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology (CEB) as well as healthcare for which it would provide financial assistance.
Apart from higher institutions of learning, industries and other agencies of the State can also seek support from the Government under the CEB scheme.
The operational guidelines issued by the State Government state that agencies seeking financial assistance must have original research experience as well as infrastructure and trained manpower in place.
The research projects have to be about products and process development using the bio-resources of the State. The funding support from the Government will be towards collaborative research, creation of instrumentation facility, procurement of consumables and development of manpower in biotechnology in the State.
An expert panel, headed by Director, Biotechnology, will assess the proposals as well as make mid-term evaluation of the projects.
The State Level Implementation Committee will decide the fund allocation and expenditure to be made under the scheme.
The Government has also called for proposals from similar agencies to set up Biotechnology Enterprise and Skill Development (BESD) schools across the State.
Since the State has several research organisations - both at national and state levels - churning out workforce, the need to improve their employability has been felt. To meet the gap, the Government wants to set up BESDs.
Organisation which have infrastructure and manpower for teaching biotechnology at graduate and post-graduate levels as well as for RD will be able to tap the financial resources.
The institutes which propose to set up such schools will get a matching share for a corpus fund from the State Government. The interest from the corpus and fees collected from the students would be used for academic and management of the schools.