The oldest B-school in the city, in a “first-of-its-kind effort”, is providing industry training to students of its bioinformatics department.

Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) has organised the training and workshop on bio-tools on the campus with help from experts of Chennai-based company Helix Infosys. The programme started on Monday and will continue till Friday.

Bioinformatics is the use of computers to handle biological information, while bio-tools are used to extract information from biological databases.

“Bioinformatics is coming up in a big way but, there is very little collaboration between industry and academia. This is an excellent opportunity for students to get industry exposure,” said Veera Talukdar, head of the bioinformatics department at IISWBM.

The training, being provided to 60 students, will cover a range of topics — from gene analysis and protein prediction and structure to drug designing. Forty of the students are from the B-school. The rest are from institutes across India.

The students are being trained in batches of 30 on software created by Helix to study pair-wise alignment, multiple alignment, protein modelling and simulation. The fee is Rs 1,500 per student.

“The workshop will provide students first-hand knowledge about tools that are being used by bioinformatics companies for research and development,” added Talukdar.

Detailed training will be provided on genetics and proteins. The workshop will also provide an introduction to drug designing. The institute plans to organise an advanced course on the topic in April-May this year.