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About the School

About the School

Mission

The School of Computational and Integrative Sciences (SC&IS) has the mandate to promote inter-disciplinary goal-oriented research and innovate in the areas broadly related to computational sciences, such as computational & systems biology; biophysics & simulations, artificial intelligence & neural systems; high density data analysis using mathematics and statistics and expand into other areas in quantitative sciences including economics, finance, neurobiology and epidemiology.

SC&IS - A brief

The School of Computational and Integrative Sciences since 2010 was the culmination of the progress made by the DBT supported Bioinformatics Centre-BIC, since the year 1989 and its up-gradation to the School of Information Technology (SIT) in 2001. The School is recognized by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) as a Centre of Excellence (COE) in Computational Biology & Bioinformatics and by the University Grants Commission (UGC), in its XI Plan, as a Centre for Complex Systems Studies. An initial effort of the School to provide services through BIC was augmented by the Communication and Information Services (CIS) which facilitates electronic communication, internet facilities, video meetings etc and the High Performance Computational Facility, which scaled computational infrastructure required for the entire university.

 

Academic Program

The School has been offering programs in Computational & Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, Complex Systems & Big Data Analysis. The School has encouraged intake from multiple disciplines into these programs - Information Technology, Bioinformatics, the Life Sciences/Biotechnology, the Physical and Chemical Sciences, among others.

  • P.G. Diploma in Big Data Analytics

  • - M.Sc in Computational and Integrative Sciences

  • - Ph.D in Computational and Integrative Sciences


The academic program of the SC&IS is focused on the core area of Computational and Systems Biology. Efforts are on to understand the Complex-biological, social and economic-Systems with the computational strength within the School and innovate in integrative understanding of such systems. Ph.D. programs are geared towards the faculty driven research activities in the areas of: Comparative Gnomics, Structural Biology, Biophysics, in-silico Drug Design, Biological Evolution, Bio-molecular Simulations, Data Mining & analysis of large Scale Data, Systems Biology, Complex Systems, Crop Genetics & Informatics, Machine/deep learning for Biological Data Analysis, Computational RF and Antenna, Biomolecular Simulations, Computational Biophysics, High-Throughput Sequencing Data Analysis/Genome Informatics & Petri Nets and Graph Theory.

 

Infrastructure

Availability of a High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) and dedicated high speed connectivity has been established by the School to attend to the needs of teaching and research. Students and research scholars are provided with individual work-stations, using diverse software and hardware resources round the clock. A small library with a good collection of specialized books and journals is also in place. Scientific literature is accessible through the JNU library portal which updates the databases from time to time, keeping in view the research needs. Processes are underway to establish a core group on Computational Modeling to develop simplified description of a system that could be useful for simulation or analysis, enabling to identify patterns that underlie these inter-related systems. Properties, such as emergence, evolution, network, structure and dynamics of the systems are proposed to be investigated in a collaborative environment.

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.