Honour for Khalifa University's biotech centre

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

Khalifa University of Science and Technology on Friday announced the KU Center for Biotechnology (KU-BTC) has become the first non-diagnostic research laboratory in the UAE to get accredited by the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, for fulfilling a criteria of Approved Practice Setting (APS) that can currently be otherwise fulfilled only by diagnostics facility in hospitals or medical centres or diagnostics medical laboratories.

The DoH accreditation means that KU-BTC has the required setup and the infrastructure to train fresh graduate students, interns, volunteers in Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Clinical Biochemistry in a world-class environment for up to six months.

Moreover, graduates from Khalifa University or any other local or international institutions, who are looking to be qualified (licensed) as medical lab technologists, can start their work placement or internship with BTC, which will give them hands-on experience in molecular biology and genetics.

Dr. Habiba Alsafar, Director, KU-BTC, and Associate Professor-Molecular Biology and Genetics, Khalifa University, said: “Being accredited by DoH will help KU-BTC explore more research activities in diverse fields, while attracting professors and post-doctorates to start their research in a certified laboratory.

This certification will also raise KU-BTC’s local and international visibility and would help attract more talented students to Khalifa University, in addition to affirming our excellent credibility.” Students of Khalifa University’s College of Art and Science and Biomedical Engineering will also be able to earn credit towards their training or internship with KU-BTC.

At the same time, the DoH accreditation will also attract students majoring in Engineering and Science subjects to fulfil their internship programmes with the research centre. Recently, KU-BTC organised the 2022 summer internship to empower students with technical competence and the confidence needed to work in a molecular biology and genetics laboratory.

A total of 16 third- and fourth-year bachelor’s students in Biology and related sciences participated in various Molecular Biology projects and learnt invaluable skills like DNA extraction, PCR testing, Genotyping and Sequencing. A recent report said in collaboration with multiple university and industry partners, the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), announced that its Secure Systems Research Centre (SSRC) has marked a watershed in progressing the country’s first Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC-V) based System-on-Chip (SoC) research.