Distinguished Chair on Narayana Murthy set up

CHENNAI: As part of honouring Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy, his former colleague Kris Gopalakrishnan today set up a distinguished Chair at IIT, Madras, for undertaking Computation Brain Research by eminent professors there.

Infosys Co-Founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, an IIT Madras alumni, would, in all, establish three Distinguished Chairs to take up such studies with a funding of Rs 10 crore each.

The first chair was launched by Gopalakrishnan last year honouring his teacher and former IIT Madras Computer Science Department Head, Professor Mahabala.

The second Chair set up today is to honour Murthy and Professor Mriganka Sur, an alumni of US-based Vanderbilt University, would be its occupant.

"The Chair set up by Kris will provide an integrated perspective of brain research and put India on the map of leading edge research on the subject. I ask you all to make life easier for these people to let them achieve what they want to do (in brain computational research)", Murthy said at a function here.

"It is a very special day in my life. I would like to thank Narayana Murthy for playing an important role in teaching me how to integrate to corporate life. I have benefited a lot during my time at IIT Madras", Gopalakrishnan said.

The three-member chair will be headed by New York-based Principal Investigator Partha Mitra.

With the support from the Chair, a Brain Research Centre would come up in Bengaluru as well as Chairs at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.