Scientists Need To Be Prepared For COVID-Like Challenges, Says Researcher At SOA In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: COVID-like challenges are likely to confront humanity again and again but scientists should be prepared to face the same and find ways to counter it, said an eminent researcher on Friday.

“Health concerns like the fallout of COVID-19 will emerge now and then, but it is for scientists to find answers to the challenge,” said E Venkata Rao, professor of Community Medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar. He was addressing the inaugural programme of a day-long workshop at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (SPS), faculty of pharmaceutical sciences of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) in the city.

Prof Rao, who was the principal investigator of the human trial of the COVID vaccine ‘Covaxin’ and the nasal COVID vaccine conducted at IMS and SUM Hospital, SOA’s faculty of medicine, was the chief guest at the program.

The workshop was organised by SOA-DBT-Builder National Laboratory developed at SPS recently under the DBT-Builder scheme. Under the scheme, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) provides support to establish interdisciplinary School of Life Sciences for advanced research and education in universities which is known as DBT-Boost to University Interdisciplinary Life Science Departments for Education and Research (BUILDER) for advanced research and education.

Hailing the DBT-Builder scheme for providing the platform for young researchers and firing their imagination, Prof Rao said every human being is conceived as a female first and it is only in the 6th or 7th week of intra-uterine life that testosterone is secreted due to the direction of ‘XY’ chromosomes to develop the foetus into a male.

“Similarly, every human being is born as a researcher but the ability to question is lost somewhere on the way,” he said adding programs such as DBT-Builder would help young minds to blossom into fine researchers. Emphasising the need for collaboration among research institutions, he said if they decide to work independently, it would not benefit anyone or solve any problem.

Prof SC Si, Dean of SPS, presided the inaugural programme which was followed by a 2-hour lecture on ‘Flow-Cytometer: Working Principle and Applications’. Subsequently, a 3-hour hands-on training on the instrument was imparted by Saket Siddharth, Scientist-II, Field Application, Asia Pacific and Japan, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Sourav Chowdhury, Software Testing Manager, Research and Development, of the same organisation.

Around 25 students and research scholars representing universities from different states attended the workshop. Prof Goutam Rath, coordinator of the programme, was present while BB Subudhi moderated the proceedings.