IIT Kharagpur and IACS to now offer MSc-PhD course in Chemical and Molecular Biology

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and IIT Kharagpur has decided to offer integrated MSc-PhD programme in Chemical and Molecular Biology for the interested students from the next academic year. The two premiere educational institutes would come together in a common platform through this integrated course.

Recently, IIT Kharagpur and Kolkata based IACS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop and offer the integrate course jointly. IIT Kharagpur would award the degree to the students and the two institutes would jointly decide about the course outlines and associated credits.

This would enable the students of the two institutes to have a direct academic exchange, which would in turn help them develop extensively. The IIT Kharagpur Director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti said that the programme is not only new but unique in a sense that it would bring two of the premiere institutes of West Bengal together.

Under the joint course offered there would be one faculty member each from IIT and IACS based on their common area of research interest. They would jointly supervise the students who would like to continue studying PhD after their MSc courses.  The registration of the students under this course would be made in the School of Biosciences of the IIT. It would also decide about the examination pattern, schedule and grading of the students.

According to the Director of IACS, Santanu Bhattacharya, MSc-PhD programme has successfully run in the institute in Chemical Sciences, for long. They are planning to expand the area of the programme and include subjects like biological sciences.