Pharmacy institute opens city chapter

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, November 5

National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) opened its Kolkata chapter on Monday. The institute offers masters and PhD programmes in various fields related to pharmacy and the first session begins from Tuesday.
The first NIPER opened in Mohali 12 years ago. The Parliament granted permission for seven more such institutes earlier this year. Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bihar have a NIPER each and Guwahati and Raebareli would have one from 2008.
Union minister for chemical and fertilizers, and steel Ram Vilas Paswan and chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee were present at the inauguration of the Kolkata unit. “NIPER would groom students for research in pharmacy and aim at solving the manpower crunch in this field,” said Paswan.
The Kolkata unit does not have its own campus and would operate from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology. Its own campus would come up on 100 acres and Paswan requested the state government to look for the land.
The Centre would provide the money for creating infrastructure for the institute.
“There is land in Kalyani and Baruipur. I hope the institute is able to find a good place at any of these places,” the chief minister said.
NIPER is offering M.Pharm in medicinal chemistry, natural products chemistry and pharmaco informatics. “We’ll offer many more courses like biotechnology and pharmacy practice from the coming academic session,” said Ashish Kumar Banerjee, scientist and project director at NIPER.
“Our aim will be to provide skilled manpower and knowledge base for the pharmacy industry so that India does not have to depend on foreign research and can invent and patent its own drugs,” he added.
Candidates who have done B.Pharm or M.Sc in chemistry and cleared GATE or NET would be eligible to apply for admission. NIPER would conduct a national joint entrance test and selected candidates would be called for counselling. There are just 30 students in NIPER Kolkata’s first academic session.
“Our aim is to get the best students with the orientation for research work. Though our intake was very less this year, we would double intake from next session,” the director said.
NIPER Kolkata has its own faculty, but there would also be visiting faculties from Jadavpur University, Bose Institute, Indian Statistical Institute, Indian Institute of Cultivation Sciences, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and Indian Institute of Chemical Biology.

Mou.Chakarborty@hindustantimes.com