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Welcome to Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences

Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) renders high quality education and research training in genomic sciences. CEGS is working to enrich and strengthen the young talents in the country by producing the competent M.Sc and Ph.D. students. CEGS offers M.Sc Genomics program and the research teams in CEGS are working in various aspects of plant, animal, microbial and biomedical genomics. University Grants Commission (UGC) has recognized the School of Biological Sciences of Madurai Kamaraj University as Centre of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Functional Genomics and Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) and supporting through several levels of financial assistance.

The School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, had a humble origin in the early 60’s as the postgraduate extension centre of the Zoology department of the Madras University at Madurai. The man in command was Prof. S. Krishnaswamy, popularly known as SK. He was a dreamer and a visionary. At a time, perhaps even now, when the teaching of life sciences was compartmentalized into Botany, Zoology, Microbiology etc., he conceived the idea of teaching Biology as an integrated discipline. For him Botany, Zoology etc., was nothing more than different ways of looking at the same thing, namely, the living state. He felt that the totality of the living state was more important than studying animals or plants in isolation. When the PG extension centre became the Madurai (later Madurai Kamaraj) University in 1966, SK founded the Department of Biological Sciences, the first integrated department in the country. Just a decade later, the Department of Biological Sciences was elevated to a School of Biological Science (SBS) on the recommendation of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Expert Committee. The UGC had recognized the School of Biological Sciences for continuous support through several levels of assistance such as COSIP, DRS, COSIST, DSA (Phase I, II and III) and Centre of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Functional Genomics and Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS). Recently, School of Biological Sciences got recognized as UGC’s Networking Resource Centre in Biological Sciences (UGC-NRCBS) to promote the research activities in biological Sciences.