Centre for Plant Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore organized a one-day event on “Hackathon in Bioinformatics” at TNAU on Friday. The event was conducted to bring young talented minds to focus on solving identified problem statements in bioinformatics. 58 student teams were participated in this hackathon and 15 teams were shortlisted for presenting their ideas.
Senthil, Dean, School of Post Graduate Studies (SPGS) & Director, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, TNAU emphasized on metabolomics and genomics study, its integration with bioinformatics. TamizhVendan, Registrar, TNAU mentioned about skill development programme for igniting the young minds to take up entrepreneurship. Kokila Devi, Professor & Head, Department of Plant Biotechnology, CPMB&B, TNAU and Arul, Professor & Chief Coordinator, E-YUVA Centre, CPMB&B, TNAU addressed the event.
Sathvika, Manager (Bioinformatics), Dept. of Applied Informatics, Sandor Specialty Diagnostics, Hyderabad gave a guest lecture on “bioinformatics in clinical genomics and medical genomics”. Shanmugapriya, Team Lead, Molecular Connections, Bengaluru in her guest lecture gave brief information on preprint mining, biochemical interaction of proteins and drugs biochemical reaction, biomarker and pathway analysis. Surendran, Sri Kanda Shrishti Skill Fasteners Pvt. Ltd., Chennai delivers a lecture on Internet of Things (IoT).
The shortlisted 15 teams of students presented their novel ideas on tools for deducting plant diseases, nutrient sensing and monitoring to deduct food toxins and archives of insect gut microbiome. Three teams were selected as best idea in this hackathon. The first prize (cash prize of Rs.15,000) was awarded to the students of Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam’ for the idea of “A systematic model designed with IoT to monitor cold supply chain”, second prize (Cash prize of Rs. 10,000) to the students of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore for the idea ‘Predicting the properties of insecticides using machine learning’ and third prize (Cash prize of Rs.5,000) to the students of St. Joseph College of Engineering, Chennai for the idea of “Nutrient NPK sensing and monitoring system”. Senthil, Director of Centre for Plant Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, TNAU awarded the prizes to the winners.