Union Minister of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Harsh Vardhan visited two institutes in Mohali on Monday — National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) and Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB).
Akhilesh K Tyagi, Executive Director, NABI and Dr RS Sangwan, CEO, CIAB welcomed the dignitaries and briefed about research activities being carried out at both the institutes.
Interacting with the faculty, Dr Harsh Vardhan emphasized the need for quantitative output that can reach common man in form that is easily perceived. He encouraged scientists that their main focus should be to exploit the biotechnological tools to address the problems related to quality of food and problem of malnutrition.
He counseled researchers to shift from routine to out of the box thinking and to dream big so that the research outcome could be translated to great innovations. He said there should be a method for scientists to work to set timeframes to achieve the targets. He further laid emphasis on efficiently utilising the waste generating resources to create wealth from them.
He planted two trees ‘Shami Vrikash’ and ‘Pride of India’ at the main campus of both institutes in Knowledge City, Sector-81, Mohali and was very appreciative of the overall achievements.