About NECBH
The Northeast Centre for Biological Sciences and Healthcare Engineering (NECBH) was established by IIT Guwahati with the support of the northeastern region-biotechnology programme management cell (NER-BPMC) of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India. The total budget allocated by DBT was Rs. 37.35 crores. The broad vision of NECBH is to cater to the needs of the scientists and engineers, and to enhance research and innovation in the field of biological sciences and healthcare engineering in the northeast region. It plans to achieve this by (a) creating infrastructure facilities with advanced and sophisticated instruments to cater to the increasing demands of experimental facilities in the north eastern region, (b) carrying out advanced research in the area of biological sciences and healthcare engineering, (c) conducting training programs and workshops to provide a platform to train and connect the experts and the innovative researchers, and (d) catering the interest of the academic community in north east region by funding projects to carry out cutting edge research that will have futuristic impact through collaborations.
NECBH established a centralized, sophisticated instrument facility at IIT Guwahati with a wide variety of instruments relevant for research in the areas of biological sciences and healthcare engineering. GAIT and motion facility of NECBH, is only such facility in the north east. The facilities were inaugurated and dedicated to the researcher by Prof. T. G. Sitharam, Director IIT Guwahati in the presence of Prof. S. K. Kakothy, Deputy Director, IIT Guwahati, Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy, the coordinator, NECBH and other dignitaries on January 19, 2021. These facilities at NECBH are open to users from northeast, and from across the country.
Thirty two projects spanning various specializations of biological sciences and healthcare engineering such as plant biotechnology, animal biotechnology, virology, biophysics, disease and healthcare biology, biomedical engineering, assistive technologies, bioprocess engineering etc. were funded via the NECBH Twinning program, initiated in 2019. These sponsored projects are being executed by researchers from fifteen different institutes from all over the northeast in collaboration with faculties from IIT Guwahati.
To ensure wider involvement and awareness throughout the northeast region, NECBH workshops are also being hosted in other institutes from the region. Till now NECBH has conducted thirteen workshops and has trained over 1000 researchers from 59 different institutions from all the seven north-eastern states and 144 institutions from other parts of India.
In addition to the above-mentioned activities, NECBH also works on addressing advanced research issues in identified areas and publishes the research in high quality journals, and files patents. Biological science research covering the sub-areas of disease and healthcare, plant biology, organelle biology and cellular ageing etc. is being pursued. Healthcare engineering research in sub-areas like biomedical engineering, pharmaco-engineering, biological data analysis and assistive technologies is also being carried out. This has resulted in 81 peer reviewed high quality journal publications and 03 patents.
