Address During The Launch Of Bio-suite Package And Interaction With Tata Consultancy Services (Tcs) Team, Hyderabad

From Computer Logic to Bio-logic

I am delighted to participate in the launch of Bio-suite package developed by a Consortium of TCS, academic and R & D institutions under the leadership of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as a part of New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative.

I understand that Bio-Suite is a state-of-the-art software package that caters to all aspects of computational biology from genomics to structure-based drug design. It incorporates the latest publicly known algorithms, as chosen by our panel of academic partners, and has been coded entirely by the TCS team, using the best software engineering practices. It can be used by academic and R&D institutions, small/medium biotechnology companies that would find it difficult to create their own in-house bio-informatics teams, and by large pharmaceutical companies. The market for Bio-Suite is worldwide. I would suggest our endeavour should be to use it for our economic development and also position it in the international market.

I am happy that Eighteen academic and R&D institutions have participated in this programme and TCS has agreed to sell Bio-Suite to Indian academic and R&D agencies at a price to be mutually agreed upon by CSIR and TCS. This price should be affordable to facilitate widespread adoption of Bio-Suite. However, TCS will have the flexibility to adjust to market sensitive clientele of national and international users.

Launching of this product will put India on the global map in the knowledge area encompassing computational biology, post-genomic drug discovery and so on. The sale of Bio-Suite at competitive prices will enable the Indian students to be trained in bio-informatics and the Indian biotechnology Industry to develop newer products at a fraction of the cost of imported software.

Based on the success of Bio-suite project I was told that CSIR has given two more projects to TCS. One of these is to develop "Bio-Cluster," a version of Bio-Suite that runs on Linux clusters. The other is to carry out an improved annotation of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum. These are state-of-the-art software programmes very much needed for our biotechnology and health care community. I am confident that the TCS Team will develop this software very fast and become a pioneer in this area, which will be a boon to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.

The successful development of Bio-suite highlights our understanding of biology as a self-sustaining dynamic equilibrium. Today, we are able to look objectively at the intricacies of living organisms. The next step forward would be to understand the controlling of it involving clinical research. Endocrine system imbalances and autoimmune disorders will be interesting areas. Every cell or organ in a body is totally dependent on the rest of body. We should be working fast to integrate therapeutic processing into Bio-suite.

Conclusion

We have Biotechnology and Information Technology. When they converge we get Bio-informatics and the important science of proteonics emerged that has revolutionized the drug design. Now with the emergence of Nano-technology we have an excellent opportunity to be a global leader in the development of drug delivery systems and medical diagnostics.

I hereby launch the Bio-suite package and wish Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), participating universities and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research many successes in their mission of promoting self-reliance in the area of medical software tools.

Questions

Now I would like to answer some of the questions asked by the software professionals.

1. As Software Engineers (or Computer Professionals) what do you think is the most important contribution that we can make to our country India?

- Shri Srinivas Chidambaram, TCS.

Ans. Transforming Indian software companies into multi nationals and work on high level software such as real time embedded software which will make five times the value addition and real wealth generation.

2. What is the one technology, invention or discovery that has fascinated you the most?

- Ms. Srivalli Soujanya, Microsoft.

Ans. Discovery of Electricity is the most important event.

3. Keeping in view that the majority of the current student community opting IT Industry for the attractiveness it poses, invariably the brighter segment of the student population do not join non-IT Industry in India. What is your advice to the younger generation in order to encourage them to have a balanced view of their respective education curriculum and the opportunities in corresponding non-IT industry segments?

- Doji Samson Lokku, TCS.

Ans. Specialization selection cannot be governed by rules and regulations. It has to be achieved by market driven forces. It is important for the non-IT companies to find techniques to attract bright students for promoting their business. The IT tools have immense potentials of increasing the productivity of the traditional industry.