Hyderabad, 26th Nov, 2025: CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad celebrated its 38th Foundation Day. This is the day when CCMB got its independent campus as the nation’s first institute dedicated solely to biology research in 1987.

The day started with senior PhD students at CCMB presenting their doctoral theses work and Dr Vinay Nandicoori, Director, CCMB gave an overview of the institute’s progress in the last year. These were followed by the CCMB Foundation Day lecture delivered by Prof B S Murty, Director, IIT-Hyderabad.
In his lecture, Prof Murty highlighted the importance of institutions fostering a culture of exploring and building among young students. He gave examples of how younger institutions like IIT-Hyderabad are experimenting with novel models of engaging their students as well as faculty members in exploring their interests and building state-of-the-art infrastructure to bring together innovators of various backgrounds. He also explained how their new microscopy facility allows people to send their samples to IIT-Hyderabad but the concerned researcher can operate the microscope remotely and study their samples themselves. He summarized that researchers in the city and the country have to collaborate with each other to utilize the different expertise they bring individually. And for young students, he underlined the importance of building with hands.

Dr Nandicoori reinstated the thought. He commented, “At CCMB, which is a fundamental biology research institute, we have realized that our responsibilities run beyond publishing papers. In the recent years, it is exemplified through our engagement in national mission programs be in sickle cell anemia eradication mission or breast cancer genomics and Phenome India program among multiple others. It is only through bringing our skills and networks together that we can hope to work towards the big burning problems strategically.”