The facility is housed at the Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences building, IIT Madras. This building also houses the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, who constitute the primary users of the facility on campus. The facility shares space with the Departmental Computer Facility, Biotechnology dept, IIT Madras.

The BIF caters to the computational and bioinformatics needs of the BTech and MTech students, research scholars and other research staff including project assistants and post doctoral associates of the Biotechnology Department, IIT Madras numbering around 350 members. Other users include several students from colleges and universities all over India who undergo short term training programs in the Biotechnology department.

Research areas of biotechnology include: Vascular Biology; Systems Biology; Structure function of ion channels, Molecular enzymology; Biocatalysis; Mechanisms of signal transduction pathways; Design and synthesis of siRNAs; QSAR and Drug design; Bioreactor design; Computational Neuroscience; Molecular dynamics of biological molecules; Cancer biology; Virology; Human genetics; Computational biophysics

For more information: http://biotech.iitm.ac.in/bif/bif.html