Prof. Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, Head of IIT Madras SGBC said that this contribution will help them in scaling up their work and become a global leading research and development centre.
IIT Madras’ Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre (SGBC) has received a $5 million research grant from Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, founded by IIT alumnus Prem Watsa. The centre, established in 2022, is dedicated to imaging the human brain at a cellular level and has developed a unique technology platform for this purpose. Their high-resolution datasets offer valuable insights into brain diseases and cellular structures.
Prem Watsa graduated with a first class degree in chemical engineering in 1971 and was later presented with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999.
“The quality of work and the team’s commitment at IIT Madras’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,” said Prem Watsa.
The SGBC IIT Madras research center, established in 2022, spearheaded global project dedicated to imaging the human brain at the cellular level and providing datasets of human brains, scientific output, and technological tools.
They have also developed a high-throughput histology pipeline that allows for the processing of entire human brains into petabyte-scale digital images. These datasets, comprising high-resolution images of human brains from diverse demographics and age groups, offer a detailed glimpse into cellular structures throughout the entire brain.
