It has been reported that two Punjab University student researchers have been awarded for their contribution to the Central government’s Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The initiative is said to be a path-breaking mission to broadly map the genome of mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb).

It is said that Hemant Verma and Geetika Mehta are among the 114 ‘best annotators’ privileged by the CSIR.

The award was presented to them at a function in New Delhi on Sunday, the function was held to make public outcome of the ‘Connect 2 Decode’ (C2D) project, aimed at re-annotating the biological and genetic information of Mtb.

The two students are said to be enrolled at the Centre for Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering at the Institute for Emerging Areas in Science and Technology, PU.

Hemant, a resident of Sector-48, stated, “It is for the first time in the country that the hierarchical research model was replaced with scientists and students worked together, using online tools to accomplish complex research tasks”.

According to Geetika, who lives in Sector 33, gene-mapping was a precious knowledge for them.

It is reported that one of the managers of the assignment was Dr. G P S Raghava, Head of the Bioinformatics Centre at the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Chandigarh.