National Brain Research Centre - NBRC

About National Brain Research Centre - NBRC

The National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) was established by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India, in November 1997 as a fully funded autonomous research institute in the area of neuroscience and brain. The Centre was registered as an Society in June 1999 under the Registration of Societies Act. It was formally dedicated to the nation by the Hon’ble President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in December, 2003. NBRC functions as a comprehensive brain research institute which has been envisaged as a novel institution of its kind in having both intramural and extramural responsibilities.  A unified, highly integrated multidisciplinary team of scientists from varying backgrounds works to pursue its objectives and address highly complex problems in neuroscience that are beyond the capacities of individual investigators. In order to promote human resource development in an interdisciplinary manner, NBRC was accorded the status of Deemed University by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in May 2002. NBRC offers a Ph.D and an MSc-Ph.D integrated programme in neuroscience with a rigorous course work. To promote neuroscience in India NBRC has networked with institutions across the country. Currently 47 centres throughout India are networked to NBRC.

The centre provides Ph.D. and Integrated Ph.D. programmes in each of the following broad research areas:

• Molecular and Cellular  Neuroscience.
• Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience.
• Computational Neuroscience and Neuro Imaging.

Location - It is located on 38 acres of land situated at Manesar township of Haryana, 50 km from Delhi.

Directions to NBRC

From : Palam Domestic/International Airport to NBRC

Take the road to NH8 (Delhi-Jaipur Highway) and take right on NH8 towards Jaipur. Drive straight for approximately 40Km. After passing around 15 traffic signals you will reach NSG campus. At the end of the NSG campus NBRC board will be appeared to find the land mark.

From : New Delhi Railway station to NBRC

Take a bus to Dhaulakuan . NBRC is 40km away from Dhaulakuan .From Dhaulakuan catch a bus which goes to Rewari or Bewadi and get down at Nainwal Mode, Manesar at the end of NSG campus. The NBRC board will guide you further direction.

Map - Check institute's main website for it.

Facilities

Residential Facilities - There are two Hostels situated at NBRC Campus. Residential accommodation to married students and staff of NBRC is also provided.

Laboratories – The centre has 15 laboratories.

Digital Library System - The library is an automated open access library system, which is kept open all year round. The most important feature of the library facility is the digital library. In the electronic mode it provides free of cost, references, papers, full text articles, copies of reprints of relevant literature to users all over India. For in house use the Library has 20 IBM PC-Pentium-IV Computers with ISDN Internet facility to provide best services for researchers at NBRC. Other facilities include issue of Books / Journal Volumes, Reference Service / Assistance, Inter-library Loan, On-line Databases, Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), CD-ROM, Multimedia Resources.

DeLCON Electronic Library Consortium - The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India has launched its e-Library Consortium since January 2009. The Consortium comprises of 8 DBT Institutions, DBT (HQ) and ICGEB. The aim of DeLCON is to maximize access to a large number of high impact journals by the Scientist at the member institutions.

DeLCON comprises the following ten research centres :

1. National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar.
2. Department of Biotechnology (DBT), New Delhi.
3. National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR) - New Delhi.
4. National Institute of Immunology (NII) - New Delhi.
5. National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) - Pune.
6. Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) - Bhubaneshwar.
7. Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development (ISBD) - Imphal.
8. Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) - Hyderabad.
9. Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) - Thiruvananthapuram.
10. International Centre for Genetics and Engineering Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi.

DIC - The Distributed Information Centre (DIC) of the National Brain Research Centre manages computing infrastructure and provides campus-wide IT services to the research community. It provides an integrated digital environment for researchers and facilitates e-service.

Infrastructure - Central IT infrastructure and services provided by DIC are listed as under :

• Campus wide LAN over gigabit fibre backbone with wi-fi hotspots for students and faculty.
• Dedicated lease line connectivity (4 Mbps 1:1 with additional 1 Mbps RF backup for redundancy operations) secured by Nokia-checkpoint firewall cluster.
• Centralized data storage (NAS) to the tune of 11 TB with inbuilt anti-virus scanning and online tape archiving facility.
• State-of-the-art video-conferencing facility for collaborating research and teaching.
• Core servers host NBRC (http://webmail.nbrc.ac.in), dns/dhcp, and application services in linux, solaris and windows platforms. In addition, third party websites (http://www.nbrc.ac.in, http://neuroscienceacademy.org.in, http://snci.nbrc.res.in) are also hosted on NBRC servers.
• DIC also provides support and undertakes in-house development of software's, web-tools and web servers for aiding in the research and teaching activities of the centre.
• DIC personnel have started to help in paradigm design and data analysis for functional neuroimaging experiments. The computing facilities at the fMRI centre have been integrated into the existing network and new software and machines have been procured to handle increased data processing and storage. DIC personnel continue to aid the development of newer and faster computational techniques for faster and efficient analysis of neural data.
• High performance-computing (HPC) cluster for efficient data analysis in functional MRI experiments are being initiated. Implementing Disaster recovery to protect important aspect of computing hardware and critical research data is already underway. DIC is also working on server virtualization and consolidation of critical server using vmware infrastructure products (like ESX server, vmware server and workstations).

Research - Research carried out at NBRC encompasses breadth of neuroscience from Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience to Computational Neuroscience and Brain Imaging. List of scientific facilities available at NBRC includes DNA Sequencing, DNA Microarray, Whole-cell Intracellular and Extracellular Physiological Recording, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3T).

Research Areas are as follows:

1. Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience.
2. Systems & Cognitive Neuroscience.
3. Computational Neuroscience & Neuroimaging.

DNA Sequencing Facility - The National Brain Research Centre has established a centralized DNA sequencing facility to meet the demand of cellular and molecular neurobiologist in their various research fields. This facility is greatly helping their research work. Currently, NBRC is having MegaBACE™ 1000 DNA Analysis System (from Amersham Bioscience), a high-throughput, fluorescence-based DNA sequencing system utilizing capillary electrophoresis with up to 96 capillaries operating in parallel. The system automatically performs sample injection, gel matrix replacement, DNA separation, detection, and data analysis. This system has the ability to sequence 96 samples in just 2 hours and perform up to 9 runs per day. Average read length with dye primer chemistry is 550 bp. This system can also be used for genotyping and SNP analysis.  

National Microarray Facility - The infrastructure includes state-of-art automated hybridisation station (Amersham Biosciences) and a versatile scanner (Typhoon 9210, Amersham Biosciences) for probe hybridisation and fluorescence detection of processed pre-arrayed glass slides. Monitoring the global gene expression profile has become incredibly simpler by microarray technology. Besides assessing changes associated with different neurological disorders the facility also helps in determining the changes in gene expression profile between different physiological stages of neural differentiation and development. In the subsequent expansion of the facility independent microarray spotter/printer to custom design institutes's own glass arrays will also be included. It can print both cDNAs and gene specific oligo-nucleotides depending on the availability.

Summer Training - Students for summer training at NBRC are selected through the summer fellowship programme of the three National Science Academies viz: (1) Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore (2) Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi (3) National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad. Those interested in applying for a summer fellowship at NBRC can contact the respective Academy or visit the website www.ias.ac.in for applications and queries in this regard.

Performance Award - Students who obtain I and II Ranks respectively in their course work conducted for Integrated Ph.D and Ph.D will be awarded Rs.5,000/- for I Rank and Rs.3,000/- for II Rank.

Fellowships - These are as follows:

• Integrated Ph.D (Neuroscience) Fellowship – Rs.3,000/- for the first two years, and will get enhanced as per rules for Junior Research Fellowship and Senior Research Fellowship. The duration of the fellowship is for 6 years only.
• Ph.D (Neuroscience) Fellowship – Rs.12,000/- for Junior Research Fellows and will get enhanced as per rules for Senior Research Fellowship. The duration of the fellowship is for 5 years only.

Halls and Rooms - The centre has one Seminar Hall, one Conference Hall and a fMRI conference room.

Sports Facilities – These include Gymnasium in the Hostel, 2 Table Tennis room, a Football ground, a Basket Ball court, Shuttle and Volley Ball courts.

International Collaborations - NBRC has collaborations with RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), USA, Pavlov Institute, Russia, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France. In the year 2006, Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University (MNI), Canada and NBRC were declared sister institutes.