 Yeah, good evening everyone. I hope I am audible and visible to all. Good evening and welcome to Centrum Connect program. And as we have been doing so far, we are discussing one particular field, academic field in every Centrum Connect. So with going on with that theme today, we are going to talk about biotechnology. Before we start, I wish everyone is you know, healthy and safe and away from the pandemic's effect. And I have today Dr. Ranjeet Adwani and happens to be parent of one of our students in NPS Kodmangala. Thank you, sir. Good evening to you and hope everyone at your end and you know, family and loved ones are all safe. Thank you. Yeah. So we are just waiting for a few more to join in and then we will start. So meanwhile, I will just introduce Dr. Rajmani to the audience. Dr. Rajmani happens to be the CEO of Plasma Zen Biosciences and he is working in the field of biomedical engineering. He has actually done PhD in biomedical engineering from IIT Bombay. And he happens to be a faculty of PGI Chandigarh as well. So more about his work he will be introducing as we progress in the presentation. So I will now invite Dr. Rajmani to, you know, address our students and take you through the his experiences of his academic as well as professional life. And yes, as a parent, you know, of two children, both of whom, one of them is anyways pursuing engineering right now and the other one is going to be in the near future. So what will be your take for all children who are aspiring to be engineers, doctors, lawyers and whatnot in the future. So hence, sir, you know, you please share your thoughts and share those insights where they will be having some ups and downs in their lives. There will be critical junctions in their lives. So how to decide on those, how to, you know, get over all those, you know, points in their life. With those words, I will now welcome you and please address our children and help them decide their career path. Thanks, sir. Thank you to Sharath sir. And, you know, thank you very much for giving this chance to talk to this young people and which is always a pleasure, because most of the time when we are stuck in the corporate life, we are so busy with the top line, bottom line, PNL and so on and so forth. So there's no fresh air and no breathing space. So this does give you a chance to revert, like, you know, visit your old chapters of life where you started your journey and where you are reaching there and very remotely, I never thought I would be in a corporate life. I wanted to be teacher all my life, but one doesn't know his own destiny, right? So, so that's the way that we have life. So I'm very glad to be here and whatever little I learned about biotech in the last three decades, I would say, and 50% of my life on the bench, I was a blue collar job bench worker. And now I'm little between blue and white. And that is where I am today. And both, both the assignments, both the positions were like, you know, fun and working with it, both come with the price tag and challenges and perks. So it is a great journey. So I think with that, I think like, if you allow me, I can start the presentation. You can share the screen. I have just made you the just give me one second. Yes. So guys, if you have any questions related to the particular stream, which we are going to talk about, you please reserve it and we will be having a Q&A for sure. And anyways, today we are anyways, we have decided that we will be having more of interaction. So hence, please be ready with your questions. And you can always post it in the chat so that, you know, I can put it to put it across to sir, and he will be glad to help you with those queries. Yeah. So you can put it on the presentation mode, I guess it's so you can use the slides. So I believe the top one, I don't know that is the thing. Yeah. So is it my screen is visible? Yeah, screen is visible, but we are seeing your view actually. So we are not seeing the full screen view of the slides. All right, just give me a second. Is it better now? Yeah, yeah, perfect. Yes. All right. Thank you. Yeah. So I would encourage these young students to, you know, please do not hold any word, any question. Only unspoken words are silly, rest everything is fine. None of us know everything in the world. So please come forward and ask any question at any point in time. Please interrupt me. I'll be more than happy to take the question, though I don't guarantee that I will answer all the question and I will answer for everything. But I'll surely give a serious try to it. So please feel free to interrupt me anywhere and I'll be more than happy to, you know, go from there. Yeah. So, you know, biotechnology using between the options. And I must admit here, when I started biotech journey and where it is biotech today, I would have never imagined biotech will reach here. In fact, if I take biotech exam today, I will not get in gate passing marks as well. 33% probably I will get because the science, the technology, the basic concept has changed so much that, you know, it has gone really beyond beyond the horizon. And I think that is where that is the power of technology. So going forward, you know. Yeah. Sorry, are you speaking? We are not able to hear you voice. Just a moment. I'm just using little problem light movement. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, you weren't on mute actually. So no problem. Now it's fine. Yeah. So if we see this, at least at this stage of your life, you feel something like this, very chaotic, very unorganized and everything looks to be very, very random. And you probably want to travel to this side and under the, you know, this COVID situation. Unfortunately, it has become more chaotic. And we want to make a Rubik's cube something like this for our life, where everything looks to be picture perfect. But that's not the way of life. Life doesn't come that way. It's very one, maybe a stage of a lot of clutter chaos and randomness. And one has to find a way between this clutter chaos and randomness. And then we are talking of career and job. And very synonymously, we use these two terms career and job. But actually, it may not be necessarily true that career and job, they are equivalent. Probably we'll take up this in my last slide, what is career and what is job? And I think what we are at this moment, not only with the COVID, but otherwise too, we are living in a very, very fast changing world. And it has completely changed the dynamics. And maybe many of you wouldn't know that this was the way the phones were there, but at the time I was growing, when I was almost at your age and having a phone was a luxury. And in order to get this phone, probably one has to apply 20 years in advance and one will get it. But what has happened now, you go to a shop, go to an Airtel or what our phone service by the same by the mobile and you are ready to talk. Ready to talk means what? It has completely changed the perception of communication. It has reached to a different height, how the life has changed completely with this one tool. And this was the way movies were shot, like with a crew of 400 plus people, a big camera and so on and so forth. And this was the way life of Pi was made, where 85% animation and only 15% live tiger was used. And you'll see how superior the movie was in sense of its technical brilliance. So this is the power of technology. And you see, this was the way you guys were going to the school and attending the Sentom class. And now probably this is the way this young boy, second grader is attending the class. The world is completely upset down, changed in the last 18 months. And this is the power of technology that now we are able to sit in the home and talk to all of you, which probably two or three years ago, we would have never imagined. And most of the calls were related to the corporate life or the business, but now even the second grader attends the class through the online. So technology has really changed every aspect of our life. And this we have to acknowledge and admit for good or bad, that probably one needs to decide. So I think when we talk of technology, there are consequences to use the technology as a tool and the utilization, how we make use of this technology. And technology in itself is nothing, it's just a method, it's an instrument. But how do you make use of it is the most important part. So every technology comes with a price tag, it's challenge, it's consequences, which one has to be really prepared for it. So what is the biotechnology? It's a pretty interdisciplinary multidisciplinary science, which has evolved, and, you know, which encompasses biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, chemistry, bioengineering, chemical engineering, engineering, and many more subject microbiology, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not a very pure science like absolute physics or chemistry, which of course, has again various components, but this is a pretty interdisciplinary nature in sense of the research, and in sense of it's a very nature. And this technology has changed the landscape and how, so how old it is and how modern it is. So when we talk of biotechnology, the term might be a little new to us, but if you go into the history, the cake, you know, Egyptians, they started making cakes using the east, then Chinese evolved the fermentation techniques for brewing the cheese, et cetera. And it's Priluna, which is algae, which is very rich in vitamin B12, and even if you go to a sugarcane shop at the juice, you will find it's really flavor as well. So this is a very rich vitamin B12, which derived from algae. And this is known from, I don't know, from which time, maybe before BC probably, and some of this has evolved in 13th and 14th century, and then came one of the major application on brewery. So how to make beer? I'm really not giving the recipe to make beer, but just to say that, you know, release the sugar from the grain, very simple. If you look at it, add sugar to the hops, brew together and add the yeast now, add the flavor, and it is ready to drink, right? All right. So this is a very simple way of making the beer. And this was the way beer was made, maybe like in 14th, 15th century and maybe 18th century. This was the 19th century. This was the kind of breweries which you will see. And now when you go, this is a very elegant and a very well-structured, very well-designed, highly sterilized area. And this is a plan of making the beer. And this is how the beer, I may sound politically incorrect, and probably I'm sure most of these young students would not have raised the toast. There's a more time to go, but this is the way beer is made. Again, using biotechnology, so it's not pretty new size, the way it is perceived as. It has been there, but its application was more related to food industry, beauty, et cetera, et cetera. It does not reach to the dimension of, you know, the therapeutic use or the other areas. Now look at the context of today's problem which we are facing. So the vaccines normally take 10 to 15 years to develop, to evolve, and to go through the various phases. And by the end of 19th century, there was no regulation to control the smallpox, rabies, plague, cholera, and typhoid vaccine. And in 1901, the two vaccines were mixed by mistake. So I do not think only all this happens in India. This happened in the USA where smallpox vaccine was mixed with the theriovic antitoxin. And it created havoc. And in 1902, new rules came how to regulate the manufacturing of vaccine. But in 1944, it came as a licensing work. So if you see the journey of vaccine is a very long journey, very, very long journey. But now what has happened now with the COVID and how it goes through before we come to COVID. You basically go through early phase, you select the candidate. Candidate means you find the way technology platforms which are going to use it. Then you make this vaccine, you conduct the preclinical work, which is called as animal trial, I mean, which you infuse this, your vaccine candidate into the animals and see its impact and safety and the efficacy. Then you register there's an IND. Then you go through three phases of clinical trial. And I'm sure I really don't need to explain you so much has been slashed over in the media on phase one, phase two, three. And then there is approval process. And then comes the post-marketing surveillance, which is called as a PMS. So this is a typical way how the vaccines are evolved. But in case of corona, you just look, could we wait it for this 15 years? Was that choice available to us that we could have waited for 15 years for a vaccine to come? Probably the univocal answer would be no, we couldn't have waited for 15 years. So it came almost in less than one year. And how it could happen? How we could address this issue? This is a very, very important part to understand that how the biotechnology are in the bioengineering space that things have changed so dramatically. So in the last 50 years, 60 years, there's so much money has been invested, time has been invested to see how the biotech space is can be populated with various new thoughts and idea. So it was much before the corona. So they were efforts to make Ebola, they were efforts to make even dengue, et cetera, et cetera. So it was enough information available, platform available, a tool available and probable candidates available. You know, today we have eight different kind of vaccine using different technology platform, attenuated virus, live virus, et cetera, et cetera. So this was one of the major thing which helped us to get closer to the vaccine. Then experience of past how to develop the vaccine was came very handy to us. It also came very handy in the diagnosis. And you know, you would have seen initially how much we struggle or whether do we have a rapid test or we have a PCR test, et cetera, et cetera. So there was a huge chaos and mess. And then you see so many diagnostic kits came out came as a homegrown kit, et cetera, et cetera. So the diagnosis and vaccine, both in this case, we could make use of what we have worked, we have done last 50 to 60 years in this arena. Then treatment, of course, we couldn't find enough treatment options for treating the corona. And answer is probably we didn't spend enough money, time, effort to think about public health. And there's a reason to it, which probably my next few slides will answer that why we did not spend enough time on the public health issue. And now we as a whole nation and of course globally we are paying the price that we are totally unaware of public health challenge and where we didn't spend enough time effort and even thought and we were caught totally unaware. Then when corona arrived, what happened? The global challenge and efforts were put together almost all the big companies and the big research institute, they put their current research program on hold. And they said, okay, let's come together. Let's make an effort. How can we handle this corona? So this was one of the times in the history of mankind where so much collaborative work came and people said, okay, we need to handle it across the geographical location and that is how I'm sure you would be reading enough reports about SSI and the biotech etc. How the collaborative work happened. So this consortium collaborative effort was a huge push to do that. On the account of clinical trial, which normally takes somewhere two to four or five years, it got truncated in less than one year. Not that every step was shortened. Probably the quality of the vaccine in sense of its safety were tested to a level where it is beyond in sense of a reasonable doubt on that account. But such a fast pace of phase one, phase two and phase three trial in the case of vaccine was absolutely unheard and no one would have thought that any vaccine can go through this process of approval so quickly on a fast track. And even I'm sure you would have read the report recently about the Sputnik and the Pfizer vaccine. The CGI, the government of India has exempted the phase three clinical trial thing and they said, okay, we'll go with the PMS thing. Are the data available? And the post-marketing surveillance data. So now is it vaccine available to everyone? That's the question, million dollar question we need to ask. And this is a recent tweet of Secretary General of UN where he says the rich countries are 30% 30 times faster on the vaccination side as compared to the developing world over economies. And this is really life threatening. And is it something new? No, I think this is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. where he says all forms of inequality in just in healthcare is the most shocking and inhuman. And probably we at this audience may not feel pinch of it so much, but it's the reality of the healthcare system of developing world. It's in a very challenging state of affairs. So the rich countries have a huge advantage. And that is where the new technology and biotechnology and space technology, etc., come and play a very, very important role to make the journey from developing world to developed world. And this is the reality of as of yesterday, right? Where the vaccines are really, this is the 30 times more. So now very important question came and I said we did not spend enough time on the public health. And if you see here, this is a bar chart of I think probably to the data has come in 2018 from the government of India. And if you look in 1990s, we were the falling sick pattern was more from the communicable disease, maternal, neonatal and nutritional issues. And the, but what happened in 16, the bars were changed. It became 30%. And on the account of the non-communicable diseases we have reached to a close to 55, 60%. And these diseases are, if you look at the pattern and the injuries again, more in 16. And why this pattern? So what has happened? Our food habits have changed. Thanks to McDonald and thanks to, you know, Burger King where you have a gym on the ground floor and McDonald on the first floor. So this is what has changed our lives. So what has happened in the developing world, especially if you see, we have a huge disease burden because we have the diseases of developing world like still in India to work losses is challenge, diarrhea is a challenge. So, which is not a challenge in United States or Western Europe. And alongside with it, we have the challenges of developed world hypertension and the diabetes. We are diabetic capital of the world. We contribute 70% of the cardiac burden over the globe. So, so the pattern of falling sick has changed. And this has had to lot to do with our lifestyle and the way we have made investment, the way our public health policies have come. So we were totally off guard and we thought we are pretty immune, pretty protected from any public health care challenge and Corona was a big slap and all these things. And you know, not only India has failed United States and so many European countries, you would have read enough, seen enough at what happened to even their health care system. So this is where, you know, we failed as a society at large. Look at the cancer burden. And this is just to take you to the biotech. So I'm sorry if I'm not going in a very conventional way and making this story a little longer. But I really did not want to come to the main point, okay, take the biotech and these are the options. Probably this will give a larger context when you look at your career and job option, what is the world will be there when you will enter the space. So India and China will be the cancer capitals in the time to come and are we really ready to handle that is where the biotech drugs are so extensively used in the treatment. And maybe 30, 40 years ago, the way cancer was treated and the cancer is treated now, there's a complete change in the regime and the process part of it. So the technology basically what I was wanting to say must be used as a tool to change the social perspective, the social life, it must uplift the quality. So there is an issue of social equality, social equity into the game. Then we must look at the over upliftment of the society at large, irrespective of geographical location. Eventually people and people across the border, they are people, they are patient, they need your help. And we should not be really very clannish on that account, this is my people only I'll worry about it. So this where we need the technology platform, it's a multidisciplinary interdisciplinary science, which helps in evolving the technology. And where there is, like, you know, we address the issues which are very pertinent, which are very important to the health to the environment. And of course, the industrial growth, which eventually takes you from developing to the developed economies and just journey, I have put it in a very encapsulated way. And it's not as simple as I have presented here. It's a fairly complex journey. And it's a, it's a complicated multidimensional thing. But just to help this young crowd, I just use these things. So where is the modern by technology? So I started from biotechnology. Now let's come to after making the beer and after making the bread and cake. Okay, so agriculture, and I'm sure you will see the plant where technology where you have the genetically modified crops, et cetera, et cetera, it's a huge contribution of biotechnology into agricultural space, biopaste, et cetera, et cetera, then industrial application, the biofuel is again a huge area of investigation and research. And there are multiple application of making better beer cakes and pastries and so on and so forth. There are huge industrial application, which I'm not getting into the very important environmental biotechnology. This is one of the hottest area where you're talking of the gene editing and what gene editing means. Basically, as you are editing your script, it is as good as the script. You are editing the gene and this is used to address, for example, let's say the global warming where you see the rise of the temperature and the melting down of snow and the water going up in the sea. And because of that, the corals in the sea, they are getting into the danger zone. So how to make sure with that rising temperature, we are able to edit the gene of the corals and intact their survival. So these are the very high end research, high end work which is going on. And again, the biodegradation of various stuff which we use in a day to day life is again a huge environmental concern. A lot of work has been happening, very high end research, the drugs which we are using on a day to day basis, which eventually goes to the soil, how it is affecting the fertility of the soil and further impacting the health of the individual human beings. Again, there's so much of work is happening, even on that account. And in that area, Western Europe is doing a great job. Then biodegradation and forensic science, the DNS sequencing is a huge area of interest for a variety of reasons. And a lot of work is happening in the forensic science as well as in the biomed. Then the molecular biology, I'm sure you would have read enough about the PCR and net during this corona time, which even everyone would know what is a PCR test. And maybe as I said, 15 years ago, or maybe five years ago, in fact, PCR was more discussed only on the molecular biology platforms. But now it is so handy to like, you know, second grader will say, what is PCR? Immuno-SS and recombinant DNA. So this was a one part of the work which happened until, you know, as I'm talking to you, but what was the next? What happened in 50s and 60s was the completely sea change, completely paradigm shift in the space of biotech. The genetic manipulation, this is completely has changed the face of the modern biotechnology. And I would be very happy to get the answer why it happened in 50s and 60s. I would say in 60s that why this has happened in 60s, why it didn't happen earlier. So the primary reason for, you see whatever the growth and the future of biotechnology, it is one of the leading industry which will, you know, change the face on the industrial level also. So I think I would be great for answer, you know, when I am done with the presentation to get the answer why it happened in 50s and 60s. So why, one of the reason why genetic manipulation has played, is playing such an important role, because now what's happening is the most of the clinicians, doctors, researches, policymakers, they are trying to work on the molecular basis of the disease. Why this disease is happening and there's enough global data. And if you look the global data, they say that most of the time, the doctors are only able to treat the symptom, not the root cause of the disease. And that can only happen when you understand the molecular pattern of that disease, so that you are able to see a better outcome and you are able to provide the better medicine, better solutions, etc., etc. This is one part of it. And now health, I'm putting industry, it is a huge industry, I mean, which probably the term was so much of a taboo to be used 15, 20 years ago, but the health is a full bloom industry, where you are talking about physical health, social health and mental health, where WHO also acknowledges it not on the industry side, but otherwise. So it has evolved very well and that is where the new phase of the molecular biotechnology and genetic manipulation has played a very important role. And this is where, you know, when you guys will graduate and you will really be there in the workforce of this country or the global workforce, this is the area probably and more new areas will come by then. But this is the one area which will remain, at least for next, I would say few decades to be experimented, to be work upon. And so biotechnology, what is the present and future we are talking about? As I said, it is an industry of future. So what does it hold? So these are the, again, I said, this is a very, very vast field. I've tried to make it as simple as I can, but still I was not very successful. You know, I was thinking whether I should do it, I shouldn't do it, et cetera, et cetera. So these are the major areas we are talking about. And if you look, they get into the cell culture and monoclonal antibodies and that deals with the molecular biology. And then you have a crime solving technology where you do the DNA and bank and you match it, et cetera, et cetera. Then there is a genetic engineering in which you synthesize the protein from animal source or plant source and new types of food and new kinds of and then the cloning part happened when you get into the mass production of human proteins and resource bank of rare human chemicals and proteins. And then there are traces, et cetera, et cetera. And where does it takes us? New antibiotics, I'm sure you must be reading enough about the, yeah, this black fungus and white fungus and yellow fungus and the antibiotic is not available, et cetera, et cetera. So this is where the bottlenecks are. Gene therapy and the gene therapy will be the order of the day, maybe five years down the line, ten years down the line. At this moment, the clinical trials are happening with the treatment of hemophilia and sickle cell anemia in the United States and a few places in Europe. And only one center has been approved in India, which is CMC Valor. They are involved into the gene therapy trial of hemophilia. So this is a very high-end research where you integrate the clinical science, the chemical engineering, the biochemical engineering, the basic microbiology, molecular biology. It's a future branch. So gene therapy is totally unattended area if you ask today. And even whatever is available today, and if I tell you the cost of the treatment of the gene therapy will be in few crores to treat one patient, not few lakhs. So it's a, you know, economics will play a very important role, which will probably come back to that part a little later. So this is how the biotech space will look like, much more busy slide than this. And probably one can make 10 slides out of it, but still I've tried to make it two more simple slides on this. So recombinant drugs is one of the major, you know, thrust area in the biotech space where you basically clone the cell and then you have it same day in the makeup and you keep on multiplying it and you make the drug of the desired nature. That is what you do in the recombinant drugs. And you would have read enough about maps and what it is done. Then transgenic technology in which you, this is called as a knockoff model in which you knock out a particular gene and you replace that gene with an advance or change gene. And then, you know, based on that, you enhance the expression of that particular protein in that particular whole animal, not in a special cell in the whole animal, maybe pig, maybe goat, maybe shape. And then you see the more expression of this protein and what you otherwise would get in nanogram, probably you'll get in grams. So you'll get a more real, but again, this technology is not very well evolved and not very well tested. There are issues with the, when you are using animal as a whole reactor, quote unquote, as a reactor for upstream, one doesn't know the problem which might come with the animal safety. And after Corona, probably people will have to look into this very seriously. And one doesn't know the long-term implication of this technology, though a lot of work has happened, especially in the expression of factor nine, factor eight, and some of the more proteins, but still it hasn't reached to a very evolved stage of clinical platform. Again, this was a dolly the sheep, which was the first clone animal, you know, was made, came in existence in UK and that made the history. And now there are enough theories floating around that even the Corona quote unquote was like, you know, synthesized in the lab. So this is what has happened to the misuse of the other side flip side of the biotechnology when we talk about the ship, dolly, and when we talk about the Corona. So again, when I started, how do you make use of the technology is very, very important because technology in itself is a very, very handicap in itself because it's only utilization will make its value more acceptable in the society. So when now I'm looking at the options, what are the options when you graduate, when you take the courses in biotechnology? And so first probably the option which one would think is the industry side, that what are the options which will come in the industry into the biopharmaceutical space? So I think research and development is a huge thrust area, which I said in my few slides in the previous slides. And especially the research and industry and development takes a very different course, very long course, compared to the academic research. So let me spend a little more time on the slide because if this is where probably you may be able to relate to what are the career options which may be available to you when you take biotech as an option. So in typically an industry, if you see the research is done based on a business case. If is there any business case? Yes, if there isn't a business case, the industry will put in the money for it. The guys will say, okay, let's start the work. Let's see what is the potential. For example, now diabetes, the insulin, which wasn't available so easily. Now you can see it's available so easily. There are so many companies making insulin, erythropoietin, and so on and so forth. So industries will come into the research and development only when they see a business case. So it's more for the, actually for the application rather than an academic interest. So that is one part. Then typically it goes through various phases. So when you identify the problem, then you decide, okay, so there's a concept where you make a concept note of it, then say, okay, we go from concept to the basic, basic to detail, and then you make a very elaborate executive summary and an exhaustive plan. So this is where you need a lot of understanding on the subject, what will be the trajectory of a particular protein, how it may come, it may not come. So there are multi-disciplinary teams come and contribute to this research and development where you are a chemical engineer, you will have instrumentation guys, you will have microbiologist, you will have a pharmacologist who will decide about the nature of the drug, etc. So this is where a lot of scope is there in sense of research and development, and this is one of the very, very upcoming and hot area if you ask me today. And I think this is something very important to consider that this can be one of the potential outcome of your work, and you may find a good fit for your career. Then manufacturing and production. Now research and development, if you typically look, you do your work at let's say 5-liter reactor, 50-liter reactor, but you have to scale up, you have to scale up to 500 liter, 2000 liter. So the scale up will happen in the R&D thing, but and that itself is a totally new discipline at least in the biopharmaceutical space, because what happens in another processes, the scale up is pretty linear in nature, but in case of the biopharmaceutical or bio-industry, the growth curve is the scale up is really not linear in nature, it's a pretty non-linear in nature. And it poses multiple problems in sense of the non-linearity, and you need a very good statistician, mathematician to solve those problems. And for example, initially when the treatment of cancer came in existence, so a lot of topography was used in order to map the cell, and a lot of R&D work has happened in late 80s and early 90s to design the cancer treatment. So every whatever you learn math, biology, it all comes very handy when you go into the R&D site. So scale up and everything will happen in the R&D, then this whole process technology transfer will happen to the manufacturing and the production side. So this is another area where if a lot of people do have interest into the manufacturing and production, working long hours to be on the production floor, and this is one of the area where one can explore. Then quality control. When you make any product, biopharmaceutical product, beer or cake or anything, it undergoes a very stringent quality control process. And it's a very, very elaborate work. And you will find the quality control department is one of the biggest department in the biopharmaceutical space. And I have put some estrics on it. And it's just the global data which is available and at the cost of sounding with sexist, but let me still say that in most of the quality control department are dominated by women. And when a very systematic study was done that why this is the case, so then it was found probably the women have more capacity in sense of doing the repetitive thing and big, I mean, more resilience and able to do it on a more repetitive basis. And they do have a lot of inherent gift of God, by God that a lot of attention to the details. And this is something, and I'm sure you would have seen how do they match the color of sari's fall and blouse so delicately, so smartly, the shade of pink, this is bright pink, this is the light pink, this is the baby pink, this is the rosy pink. And that kind of detail is required in the quality control work. It's a very, very detailed work where you have to pay a lot of attention to details. And I think a lot of women folks, they find this area very interesting. And even if it's an area where I'm working, we have a lot of women folks who are working in the quality control department. So this is something very interesting observation which has come from a social scientist who works into biotech space, then quality assurance system is again, you know, how to ensure the entire system, which means the software which you are using to make biopharmaceutical product, the diesel which you are using into your utilities, the water which you are using in your filter system, they are of a good quality. So it's not only the product, the entire quality assurance system, vendor qualifications, the even the water which you use or even the hand loads which you use in this process, they do undergo a quality assurance system. So this is one of the very big area of concern where we do not have enough brand power and human resource into quality assurance system. We do have people in quality control, but quality assurance is a very poorly populated area at this moment. The product development, new products, and it will be very relevant to understand that the product which are developed in the developed world, they are of a different kind the way and the way it has been developed, the way it is used in the developing world because the way the whole political economic landscape is there in the developed world and the way it is there in the developing world, they are very, they operate at a very different level. So the product which we require for our country, the US or France may not have any interest because they may not find any buyer for the product if they make it in their own areas. So probably we will have to do that work and we as a country have really done a very poor job on this account on the product development, new product development, which are very relevant for addressing the public health issues and the health concerns of our own areas in India and of course in Southeast Asia and developing world at large. Then marketing, marketing may sound like more of a business activity, but a lot of scope goes to the well-trained biotech people because at the end you go and meet the doctors and meet so many people and you have to do a lot of scientific detailing and working. So this is a huge area where again we do not get enough trained resource on the marketing trained. I'm saying you get enough people on the marketing side, but if you see in the western world a lot of PhD holder into the biotech and biomedical space, biochemical space, they had the marketing division because that kind of efforts are required. Then clinical research, you know where you take the product from development to the clinical stage. So again, the clinical research is a huge area and maybe I would say seven years ago, the clinical research was a huge area of interest in India, but unfortunately, there were failures in clinical trial about I would say in 15 and 16. So the government of India, DCG has put a ban on it. So the clinical trials have become very difficult in India and of course the animal activist and all that also came into the play. Contract research, India is one of the very important hub because the quote unquote, the human resource cost, the production cost, the research cost is much lesser than developed world. So a lot of projects do come to India on the contract research side and we are doing excellent work on the contract research into biopharma space in India and a lot of big companies are making very good money and making a good name in this field and I think this is something we need to feel proud of it. Then market research, the market research again, how and I'm sure you know you would have read the era, the time in which we are living, the data is the real gold, the data will dictate the economy. So market research is what basically do the marketing intelligence to do the data collection, you see the pattern, you see how the disease are evolving, how the products are evolving, what is their affordability component, what is the accessibility component, how it can be made cheaper, how it can be made accessible, how it can cross the geographical locations. So market research is again a huge field and we have done reasonably okay but still we haven't reached where we should be. HR biotech is again a very very emerging area where the hiring of people into biotech industry where they are saying we need people who have the background into the biotech space because at the end of the day the industry has to sell, company has to sell itself to the potential client or potential customer, these new new employees and they should get enough excited incentive-wise to say yeah, this is a carrier option which probably I'll select a company and be company. So HR biotech is again a very very emerging area and there are special training course available into HR biotech and on a pleasant note I will say HR biotech guys get little more salaries than the other ones. Academic research and training, it's again huge area and I'm like you know most of many of the IITs aim all industry medical sciences, NIPR and other academic VIT, SRM, they may be institution they are into biotech space and they do want to you know provide training into the biotech space because this is one of the potential areas. So this is an option if anyone of you think that you would like to make career in academics, this is one of the areas and there are a lot of scope in the academic world for biotech trained guys. Then you can be your own boss, you can be young entrepreneur and I see you know in fact I was evaluating thesis of two students from Udacity and both of them opened their industry in the last two years and both these young people and I would say in their early 30s and they are making good money, they have made extracted good proteins and they're doing excellent work. So there's a lot of scope if you want to be your own boss, you do not want to be dictated by your boss and you want to lead that life, yeah there is a chance for you guys and then the consultation remains as one of the very very open area into biotech space because the project and for example if a company wants to give a project to India they will hire a consultant that can we give this project to a company in India in China or Singapore. So you do a lot of consultation and these consultations are very well paid job, very code on code jobs in which you have a lot of time to pursue your hobbies, you can go for scuba diving, you can go for swimming, you can go for riding, you can go for hiking because this is where you are your own boss and you can define I want to work on this project for six months and three months I want to take off, you have that option available and unfortunately when you know I was studying these options were not really very so not very handy and even not thought of but these options are very much available. Again if you want to go into pure research into the government part CCMB, NCBS, CSI labs they are doing a lot of good work into the biotech space so one can think of between variety of options and there will be more options in sense of the industry in sense of the more exposure but just you know not to make this monologue very long and not to make my slides very busy I thought I'll stop it here. Then what is tomorrow so I feel it holds a very good potential to grow and also one really doesn't know post COVID what we will face as a society and if you see today A person is facing problem of headache, B person is facing problem of liver, C person is facing problem of diarrhea, post COVID faces so we really do not know when quote unquote this COVID will settle down when it will recede and what society will face and what are the what options we will have to try out so one has to be really prepared to working on it so newer areas can be post COVID then a lot of work is happening on the addiction side drug alcohol and internet addiction where they are saying there's a yellow matter other than you know gray matter and this yellow matter which is present in your brain makes you more vulnerable to the addiction and how do you deal with it so can you like you know switch off and switch on the activation of this particular area with the help of a biochemical and this is what is happening in sense of biopsychology there's a lot of work is happening because as we are seeing a lot of crime rate has increased all over the world and societies have traveling through a difficult transition not during the COVID time but otherwise too those are various social reasons so there's a lot of happening to work on the genetic mapping of the criminal behavior and how it can be done and how those tools can be used in the social reforms in the prisons and in the society at large the counter bioterrorism like if you look there's a there are a lot of theories floating around about the the coronavirus that it was one of the way where Chinese wanted to control the world and so on and so forth so and when 9 11 happened there was a threat of bio anthrax virus can come on the New York or Los Angeles so America was spent a lot of money on the counter bioterrorism and this area still remains very open and a lot of research is happening but this is pretty confidential and done in a very very secretive way but this again is a is a very very potentially a very interesting idea area to work and again as I said tomorrow is the time for multidisciplinary interdisciplinary teams so you know I must admit here to this young crowd that typically in the biotech space the growth is little slow in the initial phase it's not as good as if you go to an IT industry growth is relatively slow because you are trying to work on new concepts a new model so this is a very typical curve it is it I mean it does not fit to everyone but this is I'm making a very generic curve and I have not made it after senior manager actually after senior manager it all depends how you reach to the senior manager and post that you can be co in the eighth year provided you have done extremely well from one to seven years so seven years onwards it's in your hand how do you make it your curve and it's in your choice and that is what I've seen a lot of young people doing excellent work and they they really cross this barrier very very easily so I really not going beyond it so I think I've spoken enough about the biotech and various options I'll go with one example so it might help these young people to see what can come through and so I'm working into the blood component phase and this is their initial wisdom was that you know you take give the whole blood to a patient and then you know the patients say but what has happened with the simple technology of separation these four components are prepared from the blood and they can eventually help four patients and they are just it wasn't available maybe 20 years ago but simple process of separation made this transition and now this one donated unit of blood can help four different categories of patient and the plasma which comes out of it can be used to divide into further and this is my area of work where I work I'm I just wrap it very quickly and now it can help many patients so you look one unit of blood which was helping one patient now one unit of blood helping many patients simply with the help of new technological application into biotech space so this is what is journeys happen so very simple this is what happens the plasma you pull the plasma you fractionate you make the products and these products are used in variety of diseases surgery and hemophilia and even the treatment of corona and historically when it was made for the first time and this is a picture of the second world war when the Pearl Harbor attack happened on 7th of December 1941 so first time albumin we was used which was made of human plasma and rest is the history about this and this was this is a picture of New York Times of 1943 that is where the research came in blood and plasma product and you can see 1943 and we are in 2021 and this is just to give one example this is a picture of a hemophilic boy you can see his swollen joints and this is how he travels unfortunately so if you look journey from 50 to 21 it is a very very impressive journey and the what has happened from liquid plasma to the recombinant factor it but unfortunately if you look at these low one a very important part of it between the late 80s and early 90s almost 50,000 people hemophilic died across the globe because the products which were made were virally not safe they were contaminated with virus HIV thing happened and this is like you know one of the thought which one has to remember that if technology is not properly used the what is the price tag so one has to be really no effort that how to make use of this technology so we can use in the peacetime as I said and in the conflict in the USA in the military kit they use this plasma product and it is there so whenever there is an injury or if there's any gunshot or a wound they just infuse the plasma to this patient and the patient is saved and now in the case of corona basically the antibodies which are quote unquote manufacturing your body response you collect these antibodies from plasma convalescent plasma which you would have read enough and you pull this plasma and again you make a special kind of immunoglobulins which are under the clinical trial and again as I said this is a big growth development in the space of biotech and this is one of the cartoon I'm just showing it what is happening in Europe so what is happening I like you know we have to see in the country where we are we are 1.3 billion people oh my god everywhere people and people how do we address the health public health care issues and other thing and that is where biotech can play a very important role I'll just share one success story that what happened was when we got the independence and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the prime minister of the country was very worried that how do we address the issue of malnourishment and the maternal mortality rate infant mortality rate etc etc so we said we need enough milk but we didn't have at that point in time so he he you know met this guy Korean and he said how do we address it so he sent Korean to Switzerland to understand the dairy industry so when he went to Switzerland to understand the dairy industry how to make the milk and how to make the cheese and butter and so on and so forth so this guy goes there and the people in Switzerland they say oh my gosh you come all the way from India to understand how to milk the cow and do it it's very simple you have 50 acre land 50,000 cows milk this and you are all done and this guy Korean thinks where is this available in India a farmer will have 50 acre land and 50,000 cows for a farmer in India he will have three cows and he will sell one cow if his daughter is to get married that is a fixed deposit so that model was not sustainable and they said oh you're talking of buffalo milk and cheese forget about it it's very high in fat content it's not going to work but rest is the history he comes to India he designed the model he starts from 246 liters of 247 liters of milk and now it turns about more than you know 20 million liters of milk every single day and the cheese and everything is made out of buffalo milk and this is the history so which means the model we have to create the models which are more sustainable the drugs the various application which are more sustainable and that is what is happening the case of vaccine also where I started so there's a lot of scope to work on all this and we have to create our own models and that is where these young people will play a very important role in this entire space so there was a you know ugly looking butter this cocoon and now beautiful butterfly where we have reached in this amul so whatever career option you took take in your life these are the stones how beautifully you make it in a very pictorial form it's in your side so when I started from the job to the skill this is the skill so you do not I mean people say I'm changing the job people normally do not say I'm changing the career mostly so job is a very small part of your career so career is encompassed with a lot of other stuff where you they in the time has come people will hire you not for your degree maybe probably they'll hire you for a degree and for your college maybe for the first job but eventually the time has come when people will be hired for their skills for their resilience for their adaptability their agility to work under the pressure and that is where you know team spirit will come very very important role and I think this is my last slide so I come from the school of thought there is a karma and that plays a very important role and this is can only a slide of hemophilic that nowhere in the world there's a single example when a hemophilic died he donated his organs to various people in Mumbai and there's no other example available in the world as far as I know because I'm sure this guy would have thought that he received factor rate from plasma from so many people in the in the in the India and the world so it's time for him to pay back and you know donate his organ when he said goodbye to this world and this is one of the classic examples so what is waiting for you guys I think improvement in the quality of biopharmaceutical diagnostic tool methods there's a huge scope and by the time you will reach there will be more windows of opportunities available to you but a formulation like you know today you have a liquid formulation tomorrow you may go for life folk and vice versa based on what you need these both can go to inhaler version so many of the drugs now coming to inhaler form it's a huge research work huge effort which goes into it a fibrin glue which is used in sealing the tissue is one example earlier you used to have a suture but now they use the glue like the fevicul and this is a biodegradable made out of the biodecno made up of two human protein thrombin and fibrinogen friendly user which means you can take the treatment at home this is one big application which so you make a formulation you develop product in such a way that people can use it at home the personalized medicine is a new area which is coming up which is in a pretty much nascent stage this is like a fashion boutique you go to fashion boutique and you say I need the shirt with the full sleeve with the Chinese collar and etc etc so based on your blood group your genetic mapping which will be done the new drugs will be designed specifically for the individuals that time is really not very far where we'll see the growth better safety profile and better read I think this is my last cartoon where we can work as a country as a researcher on providing affordable medicines and diagnostic tool to the world and India can be really one of the very very important place to do this work as we see a lot of political social dynamics happening within China and India and I think India is a unique country and I think we all of us owe a lot to this country and as I said it's time to pay back and I would just like to say thank you you've been a wonderful audience and it was I'm sorry for a long monologue but I'm happy to take any question so I would like to thank you sir because I was all you know patiently hearing you know I was remembering my college days when I was there in Haiti and I happened to be a mechanical engineer but just next to my department there is a biotechnology department in my campus so I used to go there only to see labs and some fancy items there but never realized that you know these things are going on so I was taking notes of all that you were you know mentioning and surprisingly I'm very sure now people have options beyond AI ML and Java Python and Raspberry Pi there are so many things available apart from what we commonly you know here so friends this is a very good opportunity I was you know really you know why I was going to I was just giving a thought to okay can I also plunge into some bit of biotechnology myself if not you know some some bit of research so there are lots of things which I got you know I taken down so one very important thing which you mentioned sir I really appreciate and all of us should be you know being attention to that the thing that you said that we are a developing nation and the gap between developing and a developed nation is you know biotechnology is sitting just in between these two stages so guys we have a great responsibility on our shoulders and yes if you few few definitely you know I am really hopeful that you will definitely explore this option and if you happen to choose one so India would have a bright future so hence we have to think beyond our mechanical engineering computer science and electronics all the time and you know whatever we hear and say things like that so there are so many aspects agriculture biofuels environmental you know gene editing bio remediation my god you know these are the things which are going to be you know the what do you say talk of the day every day we will be having some something of this sort and the most astonishing part was that there is something called HR biotech but this was something and you know a very new concept to me and I think now you know similar to that many other you know a management program will be having some bit of interdisciplinary what do you say impact so lots of lots of things to learn and thanks to you thanks for your you know detailed brief about what we our children can do and now it's turn to turn off turn for our children to ask questions to serve apart you know use this opportunity ask real questions and you know there are few you know other questions which I only really anyways had and during my undergrad program and I want to wanted to clarify there is a myth that you have to have a you know bio background to do biotechnology is that true sir you know I don't know whether you know as far as I know in all the engineering entrances and all the campuses which offer biotechnology including IIT Kharagpur Brahm where I graduated and you know IIT Bombay so all these places where I biotechnology is offered is it it is offered as a engineering course rather than what do you say basically it's an engineering course is a four year engineering program so the prerequisites doesn't include biology in your plus two level so even if you have not taken biology in plus two you can still get into biotechnology field yes whatever relevant courses which are there for biotechnology you'll have to take during your undergrad program so that's the understanding so don't be in this conception that misconception rather that you know you have to have biology in 11th and 12th to be you know able to do biotechnology later unfortunately in our country again as I have been saying you know our ranks decide our courses not the vice versa so hence problem is you know we don't really pay attention to these courses and these courses are typically avoided you know I have no apprehension in sharing this with you all even if you go to IITJ counseling if you see people talk about electronics engineering oh my god everyone is going to IIT Bombay electronics or computer science civil and biotechnology and ocean engineering and they will all these things become you know they take a backseat but as a matter of fact they are more specialized and more sought after in you know let's say two decades time so I would like to you know seek your opinion sir so what's your take on you know biology being a requisite you know subject in plus two level no I think it's really not necessary at all because eventually you to take biotic bio is a tool to get into the biotech space so it's not something you have to be a medical doctor to get into it so you basically go through courses like physiology bio instrumentation understand how the heart works etc it's a very you know interesting story when I was student at IIT Bombay so one of my professor was from mechanical engineer and he has a very feeling about the heart as a pump you know very nutball kind of thing and another boss was my physician he had a very romantic feeling about the heart like you know very soft pumping the blood filled with the love so it's all like you know that's the journey you travel through so you really don't need to have the too much of a bio background but if you have it it goes in your favor but if it doesn't it doesn't go against you and it it's very simple to do those courses and it's hard to fail I mean teachers are so good they'll make sure that you pass through but in fact you do bio statistics you do bio mathematics to understand how the mathematics applications are used in the biological system which are third-degree non-linear equation very complex I mean no machine can be as complex as human body so they are all used very mathematical tools are used so I think yeah so the point being so bio is definitely not a prerequisite but another question is sir you know is it is the feel strongly bio-league so you need to have a good biology background or let's say subject matter you know perfection in biology so to say for being a good biotechnology not really not really because eventually as a professional if you see what you use is the fundamental principle okay this is how you know I mean they're typically how do in the bank you know credit and debit so you know basics of it so you don't need to be banker to know that so in this case also what do you know okay this is the way as cell functions this is the way cell expresses the protein this is the way diagnostic kits are made so the bio what do you need as an application part of it so if you and whatever background you have until 10th and you built on it I'm sure you are there because till 10th your basic knowledge is available to you and once you get interested I'm sure this question won't come I know a lot of people one of my colleague you know he was he has done this 12 in maths and in in the first year he decided to go become a doctor he's an orthopedist now so you can see all those shifts happening and I'm sure the time which is where we are these will be really not compounding factors yeah so hence the point being you know yes by since bio biotechnology is linked to biology so some bit of knowledge always is going to help but you don't need to be a domain expert in biology or you know a phd degree holder in biology to be a biotechnology so to say so yeah in any ways today all these disciplines are you know linked together so it's you yourself will feel the need of knowing more biology you know if you want to really get into biotechnology feel it's what is my assumption is now the next question is can you explain how math is connected to biotech so this is an interesting question yeah yeah please sir I think what one has I said few minutes back that human body is one of the most complex human system which one would have seen even the super computer is designed by human mind right not vice versa so where is the if you see all the treatment option they go through a very serious mathematical modeling and even if you look let's say you do the titration of hypertension treatment so doctor gives you one medicine and then say okay so measure the blood pressure and then the calibrate okay by giving this medicine the blood pressure falls down by 2 mm or 3 and then we titrate it again so it is it is a huge mathematical models and statistical model used in almost every field in the medicine as well as in the biotech space so in fact if you are very good at math and biostatistics both and get into the probability of forecasting and public health I mean you will be one of the most sorted guys we don't get in fact good biostatisticians biomethematicians even in Bangalore sometime I try I don't get it to you know develop a model for the treatment or how many patients should I engage in a particular clinical trial or how this drug would behave when I give it to the cancer cell let's say there are 10,000 cancer cells and how much dose should I give and I just can't take a chance because the price tag is a human life there's no chance for me to make a single mistake and we take help of computer engineer mathematicians and we give them a simulation study as a mathematical model so I think mathematicians play a very very significant and important role and they have played very important significant role where the biotechnology is today. Yeah very much I just like to add one point that you know mathematical modeling as Sir is mentioning is very important because for example I'll just take a simple example of whatever is happening right now the you know prediction of let's say when will the COVID you know rate plateau let's say when they when when will the graph flatten curve flatten so this is mathematics pure and simple mathematics no one knows what's going to happen but based on some you know assumptions some trends and we try to you know speculate and you know extrapolate the data and say that okay why is this needed because then our authorities can be you know alarmed or you know at the right time so that necessary actions can be taken so mathematics definitely in my opinion plays a vital role and not only as a subject matter as you have to use it but I keep saying in my classes as well mathematics is not a subject it's a thought process development mechanism so it trains you in critical thinking so hence use it like that you know just like a Sudoku thing you know you play Sudoku not because you want to do PhD in Sudoku because you know that that thing of you know or what you call as the kick of getting that column filled is something which is the driver so hence use mathematics in that sense so we'll go to the next question analytical skills that's very very important and which is required for any discipline for that matter yes so we go to the next question and question is if we do want to take biotechnology what is an ideal path to take academic wise so that's what the question yeah yeah so I think if your interest is to take undergrad and do undergrad degree in biotech option again J can be one option where you can go to IITs and pursue like IIT Delhi is the oldest one if you look into the biochemical space and biotech space they came in you know early I think in the late 60s or early 70s they were the first department professor TK Ghosh was the first guy trained in Zurich in the biotech space in India so IIT Delhi was first then of course so many almost all the IITs now have the courses in biotech are bioengineering are biomedical engineering so they are largely fall into this so that is one route one can take and through another route one can if one is thinking of taking various option keeping all the options open so places like VITs SRM Manipal that can be another option yeah another option could be NIPR which is National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research which are I think seven they are in the country and they have a special biotechnology department where they do quite a good work on the academic and the search side so probably one can think of NIPR as well and many of the top universities in India like JNU of course JNU has master's program only they don't have undergrad degree but there are many institutions where they offer very good undergrad program into the biotech and as I said in case if anyone is more interested in knowing about it I'll be more than happy to help offline and if to connect to someone to the biotech space talk to someone in that particular university I'll be more than happy to do it yeah just to add there sir you know one of my very close friends actually was a he's a biotechnology so he happened to study biotechnology dual degree in IIT Kharagpur then he went to John Hopkins for his you know you know PhD so this is another way typically people have been doing so you write J E J advance if you are in the you know let's say top 5000 rank then you get biotechnology in whatever ID Delhi Bombay Kharagpur all these places are really you know they're good at the stream then you do your undergrad in India and then maybe you can you know also try and get a master's from abroad or maybe you are if you're interested you can do PhD from abroad and then come back and you know join either academia or industry whichever way so this is the typical you know now and then this is such a specialized field that most of the friends of mine I have seen them doing a postdoc as well so after the doctorate that is after you get the PhD you do a post doctorate right so you get some more assignments some more research publications and things like that so that's a typical route for you know such specialized fields like biotechnology very very rewarding and as you can see you know there are two major companies who have produced the vaccine for COVID so you can imagine what is the demand side right so what what will be the value of that vaccine right now so if you are owner of one of these companies you know where you are so that's that's how it is that's if at all the remuneration or the material gains is a yardstick but apart from that the very thought of being able to develop a vaccine which is curing and which is fighting with the disease of a global scale in itself you know gives you that satisfaction that no money can give you so that's something you know a being so you are a powerful person who's because of your creativity you are saving lives I think that's something which is you know it cannot be compared and can't be explaining words so that something is just to experience so going just want to come in the kind of kick which you get you know when you help the society at large you see your your scientific contribution your own sense of it it is an immense satisfaction when you travel this journey and talk to a patient that he said oh I got the vaccine I am feeling very good and there's no satisfaction beyond it that is one and the answer the question you know if one is really research bent with research bent of mind and want to go through academic rigor I think then PhD is the thing which one should consider because I would suggest that if someone really wants to make a good career in biotech space I would encourage to do PhD either from India or abroad whatever the reason being you need to go through that grind to you know guide direct the research at the end today if you ask me I don't know how to run a ph meter I've forgotten all that now I only manage people but at one point in time yes I have gone through it so if some problem comes to me today I can handle it but may not be able to give solution so that journey it does help you what Tushar sir has said that rigor when you go through the PhD it's a journey of not doing course it's a journey of basically you know finding yourself you go through identity crisis in that and then you identify your potential because there's no exam in it there's no coursework in it so it is all your thing and sometime you work on PhD problem and you think it's a Nobel Prize idea you will get Nobel Prize and next to realize your paper are not accepted even in the local journal and you feel oh my god why I have I have been rejected once by IEEE sir so I know the pain that can happen and that's a good to go you know the failure it's good to go failure in that age rather than later because it's very hard to take failure when you grow up and your ego is of a big size you know you can't handle it very young age that is better great so the next question is biotechnology consists of bionic and artificial organs and part replacement does does biotechnology also consist of these things bionic and artificial organs and part replacements well it does include part of it but not completely because this is another area it does again deals with the biocompatibility issues where you you know develop the biomaterial and you make the bio organs so there is a special science called as a bio ceramics in which there's a lot of work happening are the various organs synthesized to the biomaterial but it's not a very directly connected area but they are certainly there's an overlap to it yeah and then another which is very relevant question I believe is you know all these 10th graders at least or those who are in ninth grade going to 10th next year and then they will have to choose between let's say they have decided that their PC and M are common that be physics chemistry maths is going to be same but now I have a choice between computer science and biology so keeping biotechnology in mind which will be a better choice whether someone should go for a computer science or biology so that's what I infer from whatever uh mono space V is asking so yeah so what would you or is your suggestion V sir okay if I look very selfishly I'll say bio but if not practically I would say computer the reason being if you have a computer option you will you may be able to go to computer but not vice versa so you even will be able to travel to biospace even after 12 even if you don't have bio in 11th and 12 so never mind so if you want to be very practical go with com but if you think you want you are very decided no no no I want to be either biotech guy or a doctor I would say then don't waste your time in com if you're made up your mind so which is hard to make up that age but if you're made up great I mean at least I wasn't able to do it at that age but but don't leave math yeah surely I think math remains as a very very important tool to sharpen your analytical skill thinking abilities so that goes without saying I would say anyways if you haven't taken mathematics you'll not be able to enter IIT streams or not use biotechnology so that's something which you it will be you know closed for you so hence mathematics at least eligibility wise has to be there you know so that you know whether you like it or not you have to you know make it sure that you have mathematics in your you make sure you like it yes for the stream yes okay okay so how many years in the course is the question for biotechnology so four years four years four years is undergrad then in IITs also provide five year dual degree so you do have undergrad and post grad in five years time you'll get a b-tech as well as m-tech degree in biotechnology in in your masters you have to take one specialization so what sir was saying maybe you know gene editing or whatever there would must be I'm not very sure of what all specializations exist but bioremediation maybe your genetic manipulation I don't know there must be some n number of specialization so after you do your four-year grad there are two ways one let's say if you get into IITs then they offer two courses one b-tech which gets completed in four years then you you have a choice of going for your masters in whether in India your in IITs they will also offer you that hey if you want to continue for one more year you can continue and get a dual degree and then then leave the campus so there is a one choice the other choice is you leave the campus after four years and do masters if you don't want to do it in that particular campus or third is dual degree from the beginning itself so you have taken a five-year course which is a dual degree that is you'll be getting a b-tech and m-tech but only after the fifth year so then it becomes a five-year course then phd depends on totally your university and minimum three four years or what we see what we usually see but typically it extends depending upon whether you are able to finish the research work so that's how many people I have seen being dropped out you know they drop out of phd also so they don't don't complete after three four years also they because the research output is not that great or because of whatever reason they they come out so that's something when you go there when you are opting for phd there are multiple other factors which you have to take care at that juncture of your life so that that bridge you can cross when it when you know when it comes right now four to five years of basic b-tech m-tech course will be there the next question is sir can we also pursue medicine and also pursue biotechnology together is that possible wow it is possible you know in few few and a few colleges in India as well as abroad and you actually buy it maybe in next two years the Indian Medical Association is going to in the total reformation on the laws and the rules so there is a going to be a body which will regulate the medical research and the degree program so probably maybe in next two years we should be able to see those coming like UK and USA so that model is being discussed at various forum so I'm part of one of those committees and it is being very seriously discussed because the way we are seeing the shortage of healthcare workers in India and also the treatment options which like you know the options for example a guy in the US and Johns Hopkins and Mayo would have that options may not be easily available in India and one of the important aspect is the HR we have not developed that human resource and why we have not developed because that has not been included in your curriculum okay so that is what is going to happen and I'll give an example like look at the CMC well they are purely medical institution but if you go to hematology department you go to pediatrics department you will see so much of biotech research happening in that space within their own departments so I mean you and in fact if you talk to some of the leading hematologists from CMC well or like Professor Mamanchandia Dr. Alok Shirvasto they are known to be father of BMT in India or hemophilia care and their biotech knowledge is way beyond anyone so I think the answer is yes and again by the time you reach the world would have changed to much much better level great so that's that's a very much very important point so even if you are going into medicine line there is always a possibility you know being involved you yourself being involved in biotechnology field the next question sir is which skill knowledge in which subject is required for biotechnology so what basically what all skills are required for biotechnology yeah I think in fundamental you if you talk about the skill there is a common set of skill where you are and as I said in my presentation also that the time has come where you're to skill yourself from today not from tomorrow and that skill I'm not saying go to a workshop attend a course I mean huge actually you should be able to build a very good storyline around your resume around your career almost like Karan Johar's film or Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film right they they they make it so romantic they make it so grand here their sets the screenplay the costumes the drama is unbelievable is a beyond belief and you see nowadays we say when we hire people actually when I conduct interview one of the time I see I put very difficult question to the candidate and I see how he builds that entire storyline around the difficult question either he dodges the question or he answers the question is secondary to me but how it builds up the entire storyline how he takes it up so I think one thing is you need to get skilled how do you deal with people eventually your boss will not be a computer a human being a guy will serve you the TV will be human being a guy will help you to park your car a two-wheeler be human being and how do you deal with it and make a career which I said which is a larger part of it so one of the very important aspect of career part which I said is a very good understanding of the human behavior and especially in the biotech what happens is you deal with a lot of sensitive part of patient they are understanding about the disease so sometime you feel very suffocated and I know I have worked in that space and sometime it is heart wrenching stories you go through it so how much are you able to hold it how much you are able to convey it if you want to you know go through that journey and have a sense of contribution but again simple you know I would say sharp on your analytical skills they can know presenting presentation skills and again little bit of understanding the overall concept in the interdisciplinary areas of the subject so if you're done with that this is that is more than enough I'm sure you know you will know all that once you travel this journey I mean you'll be very well trained and informed during the course and problem solving skills and one thing which I would definitely you know which I have been seeing sir observation my observation I may be wrong but attention to detail right so when your teachers say that right the steps it's not because you know you are doing some crime or something whether you are you know attentive or you know paying attention to those details is what is analyzed while you express yourself so that's where you know all these for example as sir was mentioning in quality control I have been in quality department in my life in my you know previous career I know how a small error or oversight can just geopolitize the entire you know setup so hence attention to details being observant analytical skills problem solving skills you know and eye on solution rather than blame game so these are some you know behavioral as well as some skill sets which you have to develop over a period of time and that's what we require I think in every space and especially in biotechnology to definitely so yeah yeah on the account of attention to detail which is very relevant so I would suggest you know this young crowd to see a youtube video of Prahlad Kakkar media group and he has given a beautiful lecture on the attention to detail and how he works in the media you know and everybody knows about Prahlad Kakkar he's such a big name in the media and how he deals with it it's a beautiful lecture and I think there will lot of people will get benefited actually I was benefited tremendously while going through that I think 45 minutes video so okay probably one can just go through it probably I'll search and share the video link with you I will also try to send you the link sure sure so momita is asking which college offer biotechnology as a course which entrance exam so as we have already discussed that momita IIT J advanced for the IITs J main for all the NITs and other you know and one other institute sir mentioned was NIP right so Indian institute or nationalist I'm not very national so that is another yeah so that one you have to explore so basically engineering sciences basically so PCM combination and that is the you know and four and five year courses I already discussed are being offered by IIT so that's one information and I was in another class so I should you know okay so what is this is coding a requirement sir so this is a question not really not really yeah not really so you know you don't be a expert at you know coding skills you know but yes again coding is all about mathematics so coding as if you don't need to know french to communicate with a french guy right so you need a google translator maybe so hence I am saying you need mathematical acumen even to code so even if you don't see not everyone knows all the programming languages maybe by the time you will graduate there will be python plus plus who knows and you know don't know the language maybe then what happens but the theme the algorithm stays the same right so hence if you are good at it any person who knows the language can write it for you so you you know the algorithm so that more that's more important I believe than learning the coding skills as such as in you know the language wise no algorithm wise definitely yes it is a very big you know what do you say skill set you have you have to have algorithm I would like to say here see no skill is get wasted in your life so if you know coding great you might get an extra raise you know by HR so so you can have better resume than anybody else so why not okay so yes so don't look at coding from how to avoid kind of a thing rather than it's like I keep saying that coding has become english these days so you can't really stay away from you know you can't say that I will be learning only mandarin so I am cut off from the world so that's a choice but if you know it you are empowered so that's that's the game okay so next question is in biotech academia oh no so the question would be is biotech academia and industry are very closely linked together so academia and industry are very in India you know the industry is having a bigger ego than academia and vice versa so they don't look eye to eye they don't shake hand very well the trend is changing but we are not there to be honest we have done only work maybe 5 to 10 percent 90 percent is yet to and that is one of the reason why so much work could happen in the US and in Western Europe because there is a there is a joint appointments of professor that he spent three days in an industry and two days in academia our hospital so it's a very collaborative effort unfortunately it's not there in India and it's a coming up but it's exactly our truthful answer is no okay so how to choose between medicine and biotech is the next question now I think it's a lot of personal choice which people have to take it medicines again I would say it's a very important decision of your life if you are ready to commit 10 years of your life to that discipline that commitment it's very I mean it's your choice you know which you make and I'm not far or against it so it's your choice you know that I I want to even within the medical community I know a lot of people say oh I don't want to deal with surgery I only want to deal with the patient dealing I'm so I want to be psychology star psychiatrist I don't want to have a call 10 in the night so I don't want to be a gynecologist so people do make those choices even within the medical fraternity so these are the difficult choices and again your aspirations your CTCs how much you want to make the money what name fame glamour all that will attract you those are the decisions you know which drives you there and it's so I think it is a hard question for me to answer sir I will just add here one thing see I don't I'm not doing any value judgment so this is good or that is bad or something like that but medicine in my point of view you have a direct interface with the affected person direct that is you know the patient so if you like to impact directly for example you know during two in 2007 I think that was the time when professor Abdul Kalam president of India came to our campus for a convocation and this is the message I could get this you know what do you say summary of the message there are two ways not every you know profession is a direct impact but somehow there is a linkage right so biotechnology is developing vaccine which is going to the patient so if you are a biotechnologist you invested your time developing that medicine which then impacted the patient and in between there is a doctor who's administering this medicine on to the patient so again you can look at it from that perspective that okay no I want to be directly interfaced with the beneficiary then yes go for medicine and in that also it's not that everyone every doctor is directly you know in interfacing with the the beneficiary but just like you can say that okay I'm a person people person so I would like to interact with new type of people hear their problems and you know try to solve them so medicine is your thing this is from the what do you say professions output the side of it and let's say you want to you know you are of that you know that nature you're shy you don't anyways you know socialize that much so forget about you being a good doctor because you don't don't socialize don't connect with the patient the patient will see your face and then he will be nervous that the doctor is not happy with me so you know if you're that kind of a person then yes but still you want to contribute to the field then again in even in medicine there will be certain professions like that but biotechnology will be definitely an indirect interface to be you know the solution so that that that would be one way of looking at it in terms of rigor the other day when we had the medicine wallock symptom connect you know there is medicine is as you know as rigorous as any other field or maybe more so you have to you know spend a lot of time doing your MBBS then your MD then your specializations and then multiple specializations and things like that you have to have that patience to study and to you know to to to dedicate yourself for that that's one biotechnology can be you know again maybe relatively I don't know not sure because I'm not the expert of the subject so what I feel is relatively lesser time what do you say in terms of diversion of your personal time will be relatively lesser if you want to go to that stature so again there are various factors as sir is saying depends totally on your choice how much time do you want to you know stay in the academy and then join the professional world and things like that there are multiple other choices which we have to make as far as the immediate choice making is concerned you know that biology is not a prerequisite so you can do over with if you don't want medicine but if you want medicine medicine as well as keep want to keep your option of biotech option then maths and biology becomes your natural choice so you get two more years to decide upon and then you take the course so whether if you want to go to go for biotechnology right engineering entrances if you want to go for medicine then you have to write neat so this is this could be a way of you know answering let's say or let's say if you are split into in split between these two choices then this could be a way forward so I hope I could answer your query if not you can you know connect any ways later we can help you yeah I just want to add here to Shar sir that I have a lot of respect for the doctors if you see them when they when they open the chest of a patient and operate on a heart they only go by skill engineers have a choice to go back and refer the book and mathematical model once doctor has opened the heart he has to just go so that skill he can't go back to surgery book and figure out what is now right by the time patient is gone so so they are very skilled yes highly skilled highly skilled they are very well I mean the craft is unbelievable more than an actor if you see they don't miss the actors may have a chance to retake retake no I totally get it sir I in fact my mother unfortunately had to undergo this angiogram and when I stuck it researching about angiogram there is a small probe which goes from the thigh that and to the heart using those you know constricted passages my god you know as an engineer mechanical engineer that too I said boss this is impossible and you know doctors can do it so that's something really you know they do it in five minutes in fact they don't doubt about it they're so skilled they don't know no doubt about it yes yes I think a lot of respect for that part of you know they're short so hence you know again there are multiple factors guys there's nothing as I told you no value judgment something is good or bad or this and that but again total what do you want to see yourself in which situation is the right way to go for it so next question is sir you know we will take a couple of more questions because already we are kind of you know out of our time limit so can we write neat and do biotech then that means the question is can I become a doctor and then become a biotechnologist so as yes sir you might like answer that yeah right yeah so right now directly you will not be able to get an undergrad degree in biotechnology while doing biotechnology medicine which I can understand but as sir is saying there is now you know some some kind of regulation change is going to happen and you know if you want to specialize in biotechnology being a doctor then what I understand is going to be a possibility in your future so that's that hope is there so you can choose either ways and you know land up in biotechnology so even that option is still available okay excuse me when you do MD your postgraduate degree you can do in a biotech space clinical science so that option is still available you go through the common undergrad degree and then when you do your postgraduate degree you can take any clinical problem and answer it on to the biotech space and there are a lot of institutions they do a lot of work into the biomedical engineering and biotech engineering great so to answer your query yes possible so and there was one small query regarding HR biotechs so what does HR stand for the question I think HR stands for human resource so you know human resource is the department which is in any organization is responsible for onboarding new employees you know the people who will come and work for the organization so hence if you don't have an idea of whom you are you know what you say employing then there is a problem right so hence the HR team must also know the the in and out of or not in full details but at least they must have a sense of what exactly so for example if you're going to recruit let's say engineers for let's say food processing industry you can't talk about aeroplane there all right so and if you're going for aerospace industry then you must know that hey what all skills are required for a you know aerospace engineer and things like that so in any job interview we'll see there is one technical round typically and there will be one HR round as well so you know so technical technical interviews are where technical questions are asked your subject matter you know knowledge those things are tested your aptitude is tested HR is primarily you know in terms of behavioral aspects as well as all these you know whether you are a right fit for the ideology of the organization and things like that so those things are tested so every job interview you'll face typically at least these two rounds there are multiple stages of different companies different institutions but at least these two are definitely there so that's where HR biotech is coming why because if you are aware of the field that's what I understand correct me if I'm wrong so you know if you understand the field better you will be able to recruit right side of people and because another reason why I see this is developing is there's a huge gap between industry and academy in our country so whatever the industry academy is training people for is not that relevant and you know when I say not that relevant is you know the syllabus are a little outdated and you know whatever is the industry requiring today for example in my case when I visited the shop floor though I'm from you know I don't want to put names or blame here anyone but then that's how it is I learned many things on the shop floor maybe because of I have to be blamed because I was totally a useless fellow in the campus maybe I learned more things on the shop floor than the campus so that's how it is so hence there is a new stream which is coming up to only see whether okay if I'm recruiting Tushar Sinha he must know how to repair a mood or at least supervisor you know the machine fails how will he tackle it so hence the HR also must know okay the nuances of what is done on the shop so hence probably this is one of the reasons why there is a new stream which is coming up and you know you might end up doing MBAs tomorrow if you're up if you have a biotech to a background then you can club it with HR and biotech combination and then you become a hot kick for the industry so that's the that's the story I believe yeah I just want to say quickly here to the person who is a kid the HR department is very crudely saying for hiring and firing and and also you know what Tushar said very likely the interviews have become very difficult in the industry typically if I give the ratio if I have to hire one person I interview 20 candidates my god one to 20 and in this the guy goes to four round one first round is filling the forms sending academic interest all that then second round he goes to HR whether he's able to talk or not if he's not able to talk we say goodbye there itself third he goes into a psychometric analysis whether he comes he will be a nuisance or he will be an advantage yes yes and fourthly it comes to us so by the time it reaches us out of 20 we get only four candidates okay so it's a and again I would say HR biotech get double the salary than the other ones it's a very very important field which is coming up great so so so thanks sir thanks for that so at least there are a few so I'll just take one more question guys because you're a kind sir must must be having some other engagement in the evening so and this being a Sunday evening I've already taken so much of time of yours so do you need different skills for each part of the industry academy can you change your position from for example quality control to quality assurance most definitely in fact good very good question I am very impressed in fact when the hire trainee out of college I don't assign them department recently we have hired about 20 candidates from various campuses including I am Sambalpur Alliance University Amiti VIT XLR I and what we say we have no jobs for you we have a lot of work for you so we say very clearly we will not give a job description on hire so you come you work with us for three months and you may come because I though I came with a mind of quality control but I am not enjoying sir can I go to manufacturing or we find you will rather do a good job in HR are in marketing are in manufacturing we change your department so most of the time if you take into biotech space it's a very very very agile and a very fluid environment you should find because the industry doesn't want to push anyone you know you must do that whether you're good at it whether you're interested or not so if you are doing something good in entirely different areas sometimes I hired people in marketing and they have taken them to the production site you know the you guys will manage production very well and they very willingly said sir it was shift so they accepted it so it's pretty much possible and one should really look forward for the organization who can offer those kind of options because it's very very important at the young age of career you may not be able to decide that I'm good at quality control or I'm good at manufacturing I'm good at marketing so it's quite likely six months down the line when you work you realize you're dialed a wrong number you know so and and just to add if you are in a startup then you have to do any role there is there is no fixed role that you have you know hired for so you know you have to take the baton from wherever you have you know taken it and then run so you know I'm going forward in your let's say in a decades time there will be more such startup culture so most likely most of you would be preferring those job profiles as well so be ready to do anything from from mopping the you do everything yes yes so with those words I really thank those questions which are unanswered you know you always reach out to me I will forward to sir and if it does something which is you know within my reach I will answer myself so I you know thanks sir for for you know spending some time again and Sunday evening I know this is a family time but you came over you shared your experiences insights with our students I hope students would have you know benefited out of it so my my sincere you know gratitude towards you and I would request all our students also to you know leave a few words of gratitude for sir and you know likewise we will continue our you know scheme we will be connecting once again and there's a new topic every Sunday just that's what the scheme is so hence I would also request parents who are present right now you know to let me know if you're interested in sharing your thoughts your experiences and I believe very strongly that our parents community have a very strong very huge knowledge pool which is very very vital for our students so with those words I pray for your safe health and you know safety of your loved ones and good night to you good night all thanks bye bye thank you very much and I just want to say here if anyone would like to see any research lab or how the manufacturing plant are being constructed yeah we are setting up a manufacturing plant for about 80 kilometers from Bangalore oh great sir if this young crowd would like to visit a plant so one field one field trip is on me sir please you know one field with our children there most definitely so they will the lab and the plant I mean it's under construction so you'll be able to see from ground how does it come to a full bloom plant great great which will be functional in 22 so that please keep that option I would be happy definitely sir by that time hopefully this pandemic would have you know so one one picnic on me for for all our children will go there together and maybe you know it will be a great fun and great great learning as well so thanks thanks for that offer I will definitely we will discuss it out and you know make it successful thanks sir thanks a lot thanks again thanks everyone and good night to all bye bye take care good night good night thank you sir thank you bye bye thank you sir