Infosys co-founder S. Gopalakrishnan announced on Thursday that he has made a donation of $1.8 million to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pennsylvania, U.S., towards brain research.
The fund will be used for setting up a research partnership between CMU and the Centre for Brain Research (CBR) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) in Bangalore. The CBR at the IISc. was set up earlier this year with a foundational contribution made by Prateeksha Trust, set up by Mr. Gopalakrishnan and his wife. The trust had promised to donate Rs. 225 crore over the next 10 years to the CBR, which would function in collaboration with other research departments and facilities of the IISc.
The trust had announced that the focus would be on researching and finding cures for neurodegenerative conditions and disorders, and exploring opportunities of applying new emerging technologies to this research. Now, the new partnership will take this forward by strategically leveraging the research strengths of both the institutions while enhancing the connection between CMU and India. The goal of the partnership will be to foster two-way interactions in the areas of brain research and education, and in closely related areas such as data sciences and engineering, human behaviour and computation, a statement from Mr. Gopalakrishnan said. It would support post-doctoral fellowships and provide strategic seed funding for research that connects CMU researchers with IISc. scientists and engineers.
Subra Suresh, president of CMU, where nearly 10 per cent of the students are from India, said that he was thankful for the grant. He said, “Our hope is that this new research collaboration will lead to discoveries about neurodegenerative diseases that afflict the aging population, and that those findings help improve our diagnostic and treatment capabilities.”
IISc. director P. Balaram, an alumnus of CMU, said that such a collaboration would have an “enormous impact in enhancing our understanding of the human brain”.
