Scientists should be prepared for Covid like situation, says expert

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

“Health concerns like the outbreak of Covid-19 will emerge now and then, but it is for scientists to find answers to the challenge,” Prof. (Dr.) E. Venkata Rao, Professor of Community Medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital here said while 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) here.

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 programme. 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.

Prof. S.C.Si, dean of SPS, presided over the inaugural programme which was followed by a two-hour lecture on ‘Flow-Cytometer: Working Principle and Applications’. Subsequently, a three-hour hands-on training on the instrument was imparted by Dr. 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.

The lecture and training sessions were followed by queries, discussion, trouble shooting and assessment. Around 25 students and research scholars representing universities from different states attended the workshop. Prof. Goutam Rath, coordinator of the programme, was present while Prof. BB Subudhi moderated the proceedings.