New Delhi: IIT Madras has launched The Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre to conduct an ambitious Global Project to map the human brain at the cellular and connection levels, with a focus on high-resolution brain imaging. The Center aspires to be a world-class research facility, delivering exceptional human brain data, scientific output, and techniques.
Congratulating the Researchers, Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “The Brain Research Centre is a great case study which proves that technology can contribute to medicine and solve societal problems. The Centre will make deep in-roads in collecting data for brain research.”
The brain centre was inaugurated on March 19, 2022, by Prof K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, IIT Madras Distinguished Alumnus Kris Gopalakrishnan, Shrimati Sudha Gopalakrishnan, and Prof Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam of IIT Madras, who will lead this Centre.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Prof. K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, said: “The combination of IIT Madras, which has the expertise in science and data analysis, with medicine is going to be revolutionary. Going forward, we have an extraordinary problem in Neuroscience, i.e. on the functioning of human brain. We are at an earlier stage in our understanding of the human brain functioning. The IIT Madras brain centre will help in solving complex issues that will benefit the world.”
During his visit to the IIT Madras campus, Prof K VijayRaghavan also inaugurated the AquaMAP Centre for Water Management and Policy in the presence of Prof Ligy Philip, Dean (Planning), IIT Madras, and Principal Coordinator of the Centre, as well as Alumni Donors Dr Parasuram Balasubramanian and Krishnan Narayanan.
At this Centre, IIT Madras intends to teach hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate students in neuroscience and computing, as well as machine learning techniques using cutting-edge brain data.
“The dynamic leadership of IIT Madras has shown the ability to herd different kinds of complex talent together. The IIT Madras Research Park is an example and today every institution wants to copy the model”, Prof K VijayRaghavan further added.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Alumnus of IIT Madras, said, “Entrepreneurship and development in science and technology are important for the nation’s growth. While there have been great strides in supporting entrepreneurship, there is a need for more support to foster world-class research in India. Scientists and engineers play an important role in feeding the knowledge economy of the country. The country has the right talent, resource and opportunity in leading some areas globally. ”
The first ongoing project of the Centre is supported by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India titled ‘Computational and Experimental Platform for High-Resolution Terapixel Imaging of ex-vivo Human Brains’ for high-throughput light microscopic imaging of whole human brains.
The Centre has built a high-throughput histology pipeline that converts complete human brains into high-resolution digital pictures as part of this project.
The Centre is imaging post-mortem human brains of various kinds and ages using this technological platform. Till now, the Centre has obtained whole-brain serial-section cell-resolution volumes of three developing brains. These one-of-a-kind first-in-class data sets, which give a high-resolution view of developing brains, will be made available in the near future.
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