Bioinformatics Division conducts research in interdisciplinary areas to address clinical and biological problems using data intensive computational modelling. Primary focus area of research is pathogen genome evolution, computational drug repurposing and disease outbreak prediction through harnessing omics data and utilizing Artificial Intelligence based technologies including machine learning and deep learning.

Our current area of interest is the application of artificial intelligence in predictive models, which can direct epidemic response strategies by identifying patterns and trends. Several works fall under the umbrella of predictive modelling, including risk prediction and disease forecasting, all of which can facilitate targeted disease prevention and anticipate disease spread. Evolution of treatment paradigms and the growing importance of AI and digital therapeutics has prompted us in development of artificial intelligence algorithms and techniques to identify potential new uses of existing FDA approved drugs.

Our division conducts research at the integration of molecular evolution, molecular epidemiology, and molecular genetics through the development of computational modelling techniques. With the availability of large number of genome sequences in public domain bio-informatics methods have been used to understand features, function, structure, or evolution of the genome sequences. Our thrust area is the analysis of genome sequences of priority and emerging human pathogens. Our group also works on host-pathogen systems biology to examine the interactions of biological components in order to derive underlying information about associated comorbidities, infection dynamics and potential drug targets. Apart from this, we deal with integration of various omics data to understand host molecular level reaction due to pathogen infection, and identify potential drug targets and biomarkers for disease intervention.

We engage ourselves regularly in various collaborative clinical and biological studies to provide valuable insight into pathogen spread and prevention. Genome assembly, variant calling, phylogenetics, of various clinical and metagenomic raw reads and prediction of protein structures and interaction mark our few collaborative endeavours. PhD programme is conducted in the Department of Bioinformatics. Post graduate students from various universities/institutes carry out their dissertation work throughout the year.

Ongoing Projects

Completed Projects