IIT Madras Alumnus Prem Watsa Donates US$ 5 Million For Advanced Brain Research

IIT Madras alumnus Prem Watsa donates US$ 5 million to the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre, supporting advanced brain imaging research with high-resolution digital images of human brains

Fairfax Financial Holdings, a leading Canadian financial company founded by IIT Madras Alumnus Prem Watsa, is going to support the research activities of IIT Madras’ Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre through a research grant of US$ 5 million (approximately Rs 41 crore).

V Prem Watsa, who graduated from IIT Madras in 1971 with a First Class degree in Chemical Engineering, was presented with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999.

The Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre was launched in March 2022 to power a Global Project to image the human brain at the cellular levels by generating unprecedented human brain data, scientific output and technology tools.

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 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.

The donation was facilitated by the Canadian Friends of IIT-Madras (CFIITM), a Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) registered charity that seeks to advance the cause of IIT-Madras among its Canadian alumni and Canadian society at large.

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