About the Institute:
The beginning of Defence Research & Development Establishment (DRDE) goes back to 1947. On 28th December 1947 then Maharaja of Gwalior, Jiwaji Rao Scindia, the ruler of the Gwalior state, created a laboratory named Jiwaji Industrial Research Laboratory (JIRL).The JIRL was inaugurated by the then Governor General of India Lord Earl Mountbatten
The JIRL was taken over by Ministry of Defence, Government of India in November 1963. Till 1972, it was under the administrative control of Defence Research Laboratory (Materials), DRLM, Kanpur. After that it was made a full fledged independent unit as Defence Reasearch & Development Establishment (DRDE) with a separate charter of duties. Defence against hazardous chemical and biological agents as well as associated toxicological problems were major thrust areas of the laboratory, which Later reorganized to work in the fields of synthetic and analytical chemistry, protective devices, process technology development, pharmacology and toxicology, microbiology, entomology, biochemistry, biotechnology, virology, electron microscopy,etc.
