Dec 1, 2014 : IITM announces “Prof. Mahabala Distinguished Chair Professor Position in Computational Brain Research”
Indian Institute of Technology Madras announces a Chair Professor Position in the name of Prof H N Mahabala, who was a former faculty at the department. The chair professor position has been made possible by a generous donation of Rs 100 million by IIT Madras alumnus and co-Founder of Infosys Kris Gopalakrishnan.
The first occupant of the chair is Dr. Partha Mitra, Principal Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York. The Mitra Laboratory is a research center which combines theoretical, computational and experimental approaches to understand biological complexity. Three areas of research are expected to be pursued collaboratively at IIT Madras:
- Closing the knowledge gap for brains (a “circuit diagram” for brains)
- Closing the understanding gap for brains (understanding about how brains work),
- Closing the performance gap for brains (impacting society through diagnosing and helping treat neurological disorders, and through machine intelligence).
Dr. Mitra is expected to commence his appointment, affiliated with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, from January 2015.
