School of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences (SILS) is the latest academic unit to be added to the list of existing schools at IIT Goa. Currently the faculty members associated with the school has expertise and research projects in broad areas of life sciences and its allied fields such as cancer biology, vaccine development, drug discovery, chemical biology, cancer genomics, point-of-care diagnostics, mechanical modelling of cells, pandemic modelling etc. The school is making progress towards developing interinstitutional and interdisciplinary research, teaching and training programs to bridge the gap between laboratory research and public health through specific research problems which are at the interface of science, health and society. The school also runs the introduction to biology course (BIO-101) for the first-year undergraduate students wherein they are exposed to the basics of biology through a fine balance between fundamental topics and quantitative approaches in biology. The school is also in the process of setting up research labs which will help it achieve its vision.
Life sciences has evolved from being a niche scientific area to an area of immense importance which permeates all facets of our life and requires truly interdisciplinary expertise. School of interdisciplinary life sciences (SILS) at IIT Goa envisions to bring together scientists and engineers who possess expertise in any relevant field of life sciences research under one umbrella with an objective to tackle the futuristic problems in the realm of biology. It also envisions to give a new dimension to the existing engineering education by integrating it with biology, so as to prepare students to find technology-based solutions to the problems in the life sciences domain.