New Delhi: In a span of six years the government is planning to establish 50 centers of excellence in frontier areas of science and technology. These centres will work in biotechnology, bio-informatics, nano-materials and nano-technologies, mechatronics and high performance computing, among others. A committee headed by C N R Rao has shortlisted 35 proposals from 30 institutions and 15 will be added later. They will be located in campuses of existing institutions, both government and private, and will have complete autonomy. Institutions were selected on the basis of number of PhDs and post-graduate students in the last five years, number of publications in the last five years and profile of the leader of the group that submitted the proposal. The centres will conduct courses at post-graduate/PhD/post-doctoral levels. They will also run short-term training programmes including summer and winter schools.