Dr. Vijay Chandru of Centre for Brain Research, IISc Bangalore

This talk will trace the journey of the speaker in foundational research in engineering science as a young academic, turning towards translational impact with interdisciplinary intent after the return to academia in India. What binds this journey together is a consistent philosophy: Technology must serve society and science must translate into impact.

Biography:

Dr. Vijay Chandru is an academic and an entrepreneur. A technology pioneer of the World Economic Forum since 2006, Chandru was recognized among the 50 pioneers of change by the India Today magazine in 2008. Additionally, Chandru has mentored numerous entrepreneurs and early stage ventures in the realms of education, technology and life sciences.

His academic career in decision sciences spanned over four decades at MIT, Purdue University and at the Indian Institute of Science. His training in electrical engineering at BITS (Pilani) and operational research at UCLA and MIT led him to explore academic research at the interface of computational mathematics with geometry, logic, machine learning, biology and heritage art. A fellow of both academies of science and engineering in India, he was a national distinguished technologist of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, an adjunct professor in BioSystems Science and Engineering and Executive Advisor to the new ART Park (AI and Robotics Tech Park) at the Indian Institute of Science.

Dr. Chandru serves on the councils of Karnataka State Council of science and technology (KSCST) and RGUKT in Andhra Pradesh. He chairs the governing council of the Digital University of Kerala. He is a member of the vision groups for biotechnology (VGBT) as well as science and technology (VGST) in Karnataka. As an author of the Atal Innovation Mission report in August 2015, and served briefly on the mission high level committee of AIM as convened by the Prime Minister’s Office at NITI Aayog.

At Strand Life Sciences, India’s first example of academic entrepreneurship, Professor Chandru served as founder executive chairman from inception in 2000 till 2018. The evolution of Strand from data science to precision medicine reflected the progress in the field of molecular biology in the two decades following the human genome project. Biospectrum Magazine named Professor Chandru the Biotech Entrepreneur of 2007 in India. The Association of Biotech led Enterprises (ABLE), the apex body of the biotech industry in India, elected Chandru as Honorary President for a three year term 2009-2012.

Chandru also co-founded the Simputer Trust which designed and manufactured India’s first indigenous handheld computers at the start of the millennium. Professor Chandru has also been actively engaged in digital humanities since 2009 and is a founder trustee of the boutique International Institute for Art, Culture and Democracy. His work at IIACD on digital capture and archiving of tangible and intangible heritage artifacts has been largely funded by the Department at Science and Technology, Government of India under the research program in Indian Digital Heritage.

Professor Chandru is deeply engaged with the idea of technology levers for bringing universal health care to India. This manifests in his work as a Commissioner with the Lancet Citizens Commission for reimagining India’s health systems. Universal Health Care when extended to the seriously underserved population of citizens afflicted with orphan and rare diseases has been a focus of his attention for close to a decade now. The mission for “NO DISEASE ORPHAN” by 2030 has been actioned through his founder engagements with the Centre for Health and Education Technologies (CHET) at IIACD as well as in haemotological disorders with the open platform for orphan diseases at OPFORD Foundation.

Address:Centre for Brain Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, 560012