The School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, had a humble origin in the early 60’s as the postgraduate extension centre of the Zoology department of the Madras University at Madurai.  The man in command was Prof. S. Krishnaswamy, popularly known as SK. He was a dreamer and a visionary.  When the PG extension centre became the Madurai University (later Madurai Kamaraj University) in 1966, SK founded the Department of Biological Sciences, the first integrated department in the country. Just a decade later, the Department of Biological Sciences was elevated to a School of Biological Science (SBS) on the recommendation of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Expert Committee. School of Biological Sciences is known for Teaching and Advanced Research in the fields of Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Industrial & Bioprocess Technology, Genetic Engineering, Microbial Genomics, Metagenomics, Plant Genomics, Human Genomics, Cancer Genomics, Drug Discovery, Drug Designing, Immunogenetics, Animal Behavior, Neurobiology, Chronobiology, Biomass Research, Nanotechnology, Biomedical Imaging and Bioinformatics. It is noteworthy to mention that in the last 5 years, more than 200 research articles have been published and 50 students have been awarded with Ph.D degree. 

Since 1972, UGC is consistently recognizing School of Biological Sciences for generous support through several levels of assistances through following programs: Department of Special Assistance (DSA-Phase I, II &, III), Council of Scientific and Instrumentation Technology (COSIST-Phase I & II), Centre for advanced studies in Functional genomics (CAS) and Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS-Phase I & II). In the year 2008, UGC has recognized School of Biological Sciences to establish a UGC-Networking Resource Centre in Biological Sciences.