July 28, 2010
School of Engineering, Amritapuri
“I am excited to see how collaborative efforts between our two universities will shape up,” Dr. Natalia Maltsev from the University of Chicago had stated, after her visit to Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in December 2009. See News »
This month, the two universities, signed an MoU to “encourage academic cooperation through research and study in biological sciences, design and development of scientific computing platforms and other scientific disciplines.”
The MoU was signed into effect on behalf of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham by Dr. Venkat Rangan, Vice-Chancellor. Dean of Research, Dr. Conrad Gilliam and Provost, Thomas S. Rosenbaum, signed on behalf of the University of Chicago.
With this, the path is set for wide collaboration on a project with far-reaching significance. Amrita and the University of Chicago will work together to investigate whether and how certain gene patterns could be used to predict the onset of diseases.
“The University of Chicago needed to collaborate with an institution that had a very good bio-informatics department,” stated Prof. Jay Misra, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham. “In addition, with us, they got someone who is experienced in EMR.”
EMR or Electronic Medical Records were implemented in the Amrita’s 1300-bed super-specialty hospital, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, several years ago. EMR would help make a very vast database available to the research team.
Dr. Kaimal, HoD, Computer Science, Amritapuri will work with Br. Pradeep Achan and Br. Anand at Amrita’s Health Sciences campus in Kochi for the work on the Amrita end. Dr. Kaimal has over 30 years of teaching and research experience in computer science.
“Dr. Kaimal left a lucrative career in the US – he was working in the National Institute of Health, USA – to come back to India,” informed Prof. Misra. “His vision was to set up a world-class research group that could solve some of the problems society is facing in healthcare.”
Dr. Kaimal and Br. Pradeep arrived at the University of Chicago a few days after the MoU was signed into effect to begin the first phase of the work. “Going forward, the work will be done both in India and Chicago,” stated Prof. Misra.
