IIT Madras Alumnus Prem Watsa Donates US$ 5 Million for Cutting-Edge Brain Research

IIT Madras alumnus Prem Watsa will support the research activities at IIT Madras' Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre with a research grant of US$ 5 million (approximately INR 41 crore). Know details here

Prem Watsa, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, class of 1971 in Chemical Engineering with First Class honours, has pledged a research grant of US$ 5 million (approximately INR 41 crore) to support the research activities of IIT Madras' Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre. In 1999, he was honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the institute.

Launched in March 2022, the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre aims to drive a pioneering Global Project focused on imaging the human brain at cellular levels, aimed at generating groundbreaking human brain data, scientific advancements, and innovative technology tools.

Commending the research underway at this Centre, Prem Watsa, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, said, “The quality of work and the team’s commitment at IITM’s Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre is truly outstanding. The technology platform they have developed that generates high-resolution image volumes of human brains is very unique. It has far reaching impact in advancing our knowledge of human brains, developing insights that will lead to solutions for highly challenging brain diseases.”

IIT Madras Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre

The IIT Madras Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre has developed a world-class high-throughput histology pipeline that processes whole human brains into high-resolution digital images at a petabyte-scale. These unique first-in-class data sets of human brains of different types and ages provide an unprecedented high-resolution view of human brains that reveal cellular level details across the entire brain. This data is being studied by globally leading neuroscience experts for new knowledge and discovery.

Further, Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys and Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras said, “I compliment Shri Prem Watsa on his contribution to Brain Centre at IIT Madras. This augments the support the Centre is already receiving from various philanthropic and CSR funds and enables the Centre to scale up its research on human brain atlas.”

Thanking Prem Watsa for this generous contribution, Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, said, “We are delighted to see Prem Watsa supporting a crucial initiative at IIT Madras in relation to understanding the brain.”

“This generous support from Mr. Prem Watsa will play a critical role in scaling up our work towards becoming a globally leading R&D centre,” remarked Prof. Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, Head of IIT Madras Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre.

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