HYDERABAD: THE much hyped about STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is slowly but surely inching towards incorporating biology and life sciences as a part of its curriculum.

The most recent example of this is the AICTE instructing its constituent institutions to teach the basics of Biology along with subjects like Physics and Chemistry.

The IITs, however, have taken already a lead on this. While the IITs at Kharagpur, Madras, Kanpur, Bombay, Delhi and Guwahati had introduced life sciences as a compulsory course for undergraduate students over the last decade, IIT Hyderabad, one of the second generation institutes, recently introduced a minor course in Artificial Intelligence and Humanities.

Experts claim that in today’s world of convergence, knowledge of biology for engineers is as important as Mathematics and Physics. Dr Gaotham Rao, president of Telangana Engineering College Management Association lauds the move.“These courses are still in the process of gaining acceptance and will become popular, subject to employment avenues that these open up,” he said.

BTech with economics is a popular choice among students in Telangana. Osmania University’s College of Engineering offers biology paper only for the biomedical engineering course.“Making Life Sciences a core subject would be difficult because we can’t fit everything in that span of 4 years,” says Prof Syeda Sameen, principal of OU College for Engineering.

“But right now many of our CSE and even mechanical students are doing health care related projects but Biology has not been introduced,” she adds. IIIT-Hyderabad too has jumped in the bandwagon of introducing interdisciplinary courses and offers a dual degree in Computational Natural Sciencesand Bio-infotech programme.

Prof Ramesh Loganathan of IIIT-H said the outreach of such interdisciplinary courses is still limited because a handful of educational institutes offer such courses.