Right at its inception, the School encouraged formation of a students' society which was christened “The Biotech Society.” Since then, the Society has come a long way and has organized programmes that are big by any yardstick. It has so far organized three National Symposia. This is an annual ev ent is known as “BIOTALK.” The annual quiz, called “The HEADCRUNCHER” is the largest quiz in Central India and each year more than a 100 teams participate and more than a lakh rupees worth of prizes are given away to the winners and to the people in the audience answering the questions. The Society also holds an annual Science model competition called “CONCOCTION”. Beginning this session, the Society also started a newsletter called “SENTIENCE.”
The Society is entirely managed by the students and serves two purposes. One, it keeps the academic environment exuberant and two, it teaches students organizational skills. Each year, the students elect a new body for the Society which then decides the programmes and manages the programmes and the finances.

Given below is the list of programmes that the society has successfully undertaken in the session 2005-2006.


Concoction : The Science Exhibition
Concoction this year was as much a success as the last its debut year. Although Concoction only allows dynamic models, owing to their aesthetic beauty, a few static models were also permitted this year. As is usual for the programmes conducted by us, this activity too met with stunning response from students of various educational institutions in and around Nagpur. Since the response was much more than imagined, we had to cancel several entries for lack of space.

Biotalk-3 : The Annual Symposium
This years BIOTALK was on “Cancer” and took place on the 21st and 22nd of January 2005. Several eminent scholars from premier institutes in India participated in the symposium.
Dr. Manju Ray, the Shantiswarup Bhatnagar awardee from Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences, spoke about her work with methylglyoxal as a curative molecule for virtually all types of cancers. Incidentally, Shantiswarup bhatnagar Award is the highest science award in India.
Dr. M. B. Sahasrabudhe, former Director, Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai, deliberated upon a novel compounds that improves the immunological activity against cancer.
Dr. Tapan Chakrabarti, Director Grade scientist, NEERI, Nagpur, talked about apoptosis in general and his work on apoptosis in cancer in particular.
Dr. R. Annapoorni, MRDG, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, talked about the latest frontiers in cancer – cancer stem cells. She thrilled the audience with her work in the field and discussed here future plans in the subject too. It may be mentioned that Dr. Annapoorni is an alumnus of Hislop College.
Earlier, Dr. Avinash Upadhyay, Hislop School of Biotechnology, talked about the basic aspects of cancer and touched upon the various topics that the eminent speakers were to talk on later.
500 student participants drawing from virtually all institutes in and around Nagpur attended the two day symposium. There interest could be seen clearly from the plethora of questions addressed to the speakers.
One of the highlights of symposium was a talk by our own student – Rasika Rohatgi (B.Sc. Final, Biotechnology), delivered a talk on wasp behaviour, a work that she had conducted at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, after having been selected as a JNCASR scholar. Incidentally, very few students every year get selected as JNCASR scholars.
The proceedings of Biotalk 3 can be downloaded by anyone from this site. Click here

Headcruncher: The Annual Quiz
The HEADCRUNCHER has evolved as the biggest quiz in Central India. This year too it lived up to this status as more than 150 teams participated. The elimination rounds were spruced up this year with many more questions so as to make a better judgment. Even then a second elimination round was necessitated owing to the sheer number of teams participating. Eight teams qualified for the penultimate round. Eventually the team from IAS Coaching Centre emerged winners defeating teams from VNIT and G. H. Raisoni College of Engineering. This is the charm of this quiz last year a school team had emerged winner defeating the elders and more accomplished participants. More than a lakh rupees in cash and kind were given away as prize to the winners, the semifinalists and the members of the audience.

Sentience : The Newsletter
The Biotech Society began publishing its newsletter “SENTIENCE” from this academic year. The students took up the editorial work and came out with a superbly worded and produced booklet detailing work being carried out in the School and snippets informing about the recent developments in lifesciences.

Expression
This was cultural programme that was initiated this year by the Biotech Society. Being the first year and owing to the lack of enough time for publicity, just 5 teams participated. We believe that this lack of teams will be remedied in the coming year.