IIT Madras Brain Centre to map human brains at cellular level

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)Madras has launched the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre to power an ambitious Global Project to map the human brain at the cellular and connectivity levels, with a focus on high-resolution brain imaging.

This state-of-the-art Centre aims to become a world-renowned research centre, generating unprecedented human brain data, scientific output and technology tools.

IITM has been ranked No.1 in the 'Overall' Category for the third consecutive year in India Ranking 2021 released by National Institutional Ranking Framework, Ministry of Education, Govt. of India

IIT Madras plans to train hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate students at this centre in neuro-science and computing, machine learning techniques on cutting-edge brain data.

According to a statement, the centre is supported by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and his wife Sudha Gopalakrishnan. Their dedicated efforts in seeding research at IIT Madras at the intersection of Neuroscience and Engineering are now powering this centre in the frontier research area of brain mapping.

Prof K Vijay Raghavan, 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."

"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," he added.

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."

Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, and Head of Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre said: "The technology platform we have developed and our strong medical collaborations, is allowing us to generate high-resolution large-format histology sections of human brains that will advance the field significantly."

The centre will also work on 3D digital neuro-anatomy of the postmortem human brain with cellular resolution. This is a field with great potential for scientific discovery and also for the understanding of neurological disorders.

The unique data sets being generated here promise to be widely impactful through open sharing with an international research community.