The Indian Institute of Technology Madras will inaugurate the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre at 12 noon tomorrow, March 19. The centre will be inaugurated by Prof K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, in the presence of the Director of IIT Madras, Prof V Kamakoti, Chairman of Axilor Ventures, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Sudha Gopalakrishnan, after whom the centre is named. 

The centre's focus will be high-resolution imaging of whole human brains with the goal of mapping the human brain at the cellular and connectivity levels. The centre will work closely with leading medical institutions in the country and global leaders in brain mapping. The vision of the centre is to become a world-renowned neuroanatomy research enterprise that generates globally sought-after human brain data and technology tools.

The first ongoing project of the centre, titled 'Computational and Experimental Platform for High-Resolution Terapixel Imaging of ex-vivo Human Brains' is supported by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. Through this project, the centre has developed a high-throughput histology pipeline that processes whole human brains into high-resolution digital atlases. Through this technology platform, the centre is imaging post-mortem whole human brains of different types and ages.