SMVDU Katra: Ms. Sheetal Bhat, a student of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, D/o Smt. Sweety and Mr. Pran Nath Bhat brought laurel to the University as she won First Prize in poster presentation in Health and Dentistry. She is perusing her M.Sc. in Biotechnology and is presently working under the supervision of Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Assistant Professor and Mr. Arvind Yadav for her dissertation work. She presented her poster on “Genetic characterization of human pulmonary neoplasm & its effect on human health” and her study laid stress on understanding the dynamics of lung cancer genetics and to target various biomarkers in respiratory secretions and tissue specimens, which hold promise for early, non-invasive diagnosis of lung cancer.

Dr. Rakesh Kumar is cancer biologist working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology. All his major research projects focus on different cancers and presently his major research grants are on Breast and Lung Cancer funded by DST-Govt. of India and SERB-Govt. of India. He thanked DST-Govt. of India for sponsoring the recently funded research project on Non-Small cell lung carcinoma. The Vice Chancellor Dr. Sanjeev Jain congratulated the student and faculty for the award. He has been laying stress on quality work and encouraging the students for it. He laid emphasis on such studies and reiterated that these studies are commendable for their international standards, which will go a long way in patient care and data generation from Jammu and Kashmir. It is worth mentioning here that SMVDU has set benchmarks for the outgoing students of B. Tech. and M.Sc. for their dissertation work and such benchmarks will raise the standard of University. Ms. Sheetal Bhat thanked her supervisors and Head of the Department Prof. V. Verma for the guidance and support for study.