About Department

Department of Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering was established a few years back in 2006. The potential of biotechnology has just begun to emerge in the late 20th century. After the full knowledge of human genomes, biotechnology has stepped up into a new era of drug discovery and delivery, diagnostic methodology, clinical trials, and to a great extent the major lifestyle of the human society. Biotechnology has opened doors to make proteins with new functions and altered products. With new proteins and new biochemical pathways, it seems only logical to find ways to incorporate the new functions into crops, into animals, and, it is hoped, into people with genetically based illnesses. Pakistan, being a developing country, has several constraints especially to develop biotechnology in the country. Although, several universities have programs in Bio-chemical Engineering, Molecular biology and Biotechnology with world-class facilities, an acute shortage of trained manpower continues to exist. This is because of the shortage of centers where scientists could be trained in the experimental arts of biological research. Several universities offer training programs, but may not have facilities to give experimental exposures to the students, and therefore, there exists a great gap between the required essential facilities for training and the vision of progress of biotechnology in the country.

To fulfill this gap and meet the global challenges, Department of Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering has started its BS program in Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering and currently has more than 200 students in its BS program. In addition to the BS program, the department has recently started M. Phil and PhD programs and currently has 40 M. Phil and 5 PhD scholars. They are carrying their research activities in different fields of biotechnology including Plant, Industrial, Environmental, Pharmaceutical, Human and Medical. For all these programs we have a highly qualified staff consisting of more than 15 members of which 10 have PhD's and are actively involved in research in different domains of Biotechnology.