Kalam to inaugurate Centre of Excellence at CDFD

The 'Centre of Excellence', established here jointly by the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Sun Microsystems, would be inaugurated by President APJ Abdul Kalam on Friday.

CDFD director Syed Husnain said that the centre, which would primarily focus on striving for excellence in the field of medical bioinformatics, has been set up at a cost of $5 million. Of this, $4 million was given by Sun Microsystems and the remaining cost of $1 million was shared by CDFD and the Andhra Pradesh government.

According to Husnain, the Centre of Excellence at CDFD is the only one of its kind in the country that has the requisite facilities to carry out advanced research in the field of bioinformatics.

"It will not only add immense value to the institute and the industry at large, but will also help in putting India on the world map as a leader of bioinformatics," he told newspersons here on Thursday.

Sun Microsystems India managing director Bhaskar Pramanik said that CDFD would implement Sun Technical Computing portal, Sun Java Portal Software and Sun Grid Engine.

These deployments would allow online acceptance, data processing and output delivery for international projects, thereby enabling significant savings on resources and time.