 
Department of Microbiology, MGMCRI organized SoZoBiome’18, a South Zone Level Competition on “Microbiology & Infectious Disease” for Medical Undergraduate students on 12th May 2018 at MGMCRI, Pondicherry. The program consisted of scientific quiz, oral and poster presentations.
A total of 386 medical undergraduates from medical institutes from various parts of South India participated in this event. The inauguration ceremony started at 9.15 am with invocation song by Dr. Srirangaraj S, Professor, Department of Microbiology, MGMCRI. Dr. Joshy M Easow, Organizing Chairman and Professor & Head, Department of Microbiology, MGMCRI delivered the welcome address. It was followed by lighting the lamp in a traditional manner. The Chief Guest Prof. K. R. Sethuraman, Vice-Chancellor, SBV delivered the inaugural address. Prof. M. Ravishankar, Dean, MGMCRI offered felicitations. Dr. Umadevi S, Organizing Secretary proposed the vote of thanks.
A total of 11 oral papers and 9 scientific posters were presented by participants from various medical institutes. The judges for oral presentation were Dr. Sethumadhavan. K, Professor & Head, Microbiology, AVMC, Pondicherry and Dr. Jayapal V, Professor, Microbiology, MGMCRI.
Dr. Jeyakumari D, Professor & Head, Microbiology, JIPMER, Karaikal and Dr. Stephen S, Professor, Microbiology, MGMCRI judged the Scientific Poster session.
In the oral presentation session, Mr. Prashanth S from Madras Medical College (MMC) won the first prize. Ms. Niveditha S from Saveetha Medical College won the second place and Mr. Sreeram M from Sri Lakshmi Narayana Institute of Medical Science won the third place.
Mr. Shanley Abhishek from Thanjavur Medical College won the first prize for Poster presentation, while Mr. Abhay from Madras Medical College and Ms. Thanushree from MGMCRI won the second and third prize respectively.
The quiz event began with a preliminary round. Out of 122 participating teams, first five top scoring teams were selected directly for the Final Quiz event. Wild Card round was conducted to select the sixth team for the Final Quiz among the remaining 13 highest scoring teams of the preliminary round.
Final Quiz event took place in the post-lunch session with six selected teams – two teams from MMC, one team each from JIPMER, MGMCRI, IGMC and BMC. The Quiz Master was Dr. Valentina Y, Assistant Professor, Microbiology, MGMCRI. It had six rounds, namely, a round on historical facts, Immunology round, picture connection round, a round on recent advances and techniques in Microbiology, Case-based multistep quiz round and finally Rapid-fire round. Out of the six teams, the team from MMC (Mr. Sundar Natesh, Mr. Shravan M and Mr. Swaraj Sahu) was the winner of the quiz event. Team from MMC (Mr. Madhubaalajy, Mr. Gokul Dev V.V. and Mr. Nivash G) and Team from JIPMER (Mr. Ruben Raj, Mr. John Emmanuel S and Mr. Kandela Ajay) took the second and third place.
The Final Quiz was followed by Valedictory Function and Prize Distribution. Dr. Joshy M Easow, Organizing Chairman, Dr. Umadevi S, Organizing Secretary, Dr. Sedhumadhavan, Dr. Jaikumari S, Dr. Stephen S, and Dr. Jayapal V, judges for oral and poster presentations distributed the prizes to the winners. The entire programme was well appreciated by all the participants and audience.
