The Department was started in the year 2009 and was housed under the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Life Sciences. The Department is committed to excellence in education, research and extension. The Department is being strengthened with various research units and periodical update / modernization of the curricula. The Department of Microbiology at the Pondicherry University, School of Life Sciences, brings together a variety of researchers as faculty of this programme who are specialized in their domains and united by the common goal of understanding the “Microbes”.The department has been offering M.Sc. and Ph.D. courses in Microbiology.

As the microbial activities are so diverse, the microbiology programme is a multidisciplinary subject, which will have the roots of life science, environmental science, and engineering. Traditional microbiology is considered to be an important area of study in biology since it has enormous potential and vast scope in fermentation, bioremediation and biomedical technology. But the recent developments from human microbiome project, metagenomics and microbial genome projects have expanded its scope and potential in the next generation drug design, molecular pathogenesis, phylogeography, production of smart biomolecules, etc. Modern Microbiology has expanded its roots in genome technology, nanobiotechnology, green energy (biofuel) technology, bioelectronics, etc. Considering recent innovations and rapid growth of microbiological approaches and applications in human and environmental sustainability, the M.Sc. Microbiology curriculum is designed to enlighten the students in basics of Microbiology to recent developments.