CSIR IGIB and IIT Alumni Council announce MoU for joint research to tackle COVID 19
Photo by : Incredible India Info
To work towards accelerating the development and commercialization of indigenous technologies in testing and treatment of infectious diseases including COVID-19
To open-source one of the world's
largest longitudinal COVID-19 Patient Data Sets for authorized researchers
anywhere. First set of 8500 patient imaging data from NSCI Dome initiative of
IIT Alumni Council has been handed over to CSIR IGIB.
CSIR Institute of Genomics and
Integrative Biology (IGIB) and IIT Alumni Council announce a MoU for COVID-19
disease research and patient data analysis. On this occasion , IIT Alumni
Council also handed over the first set of 8500 patient imaging data from Mumbai
to IGIB, which will soon be made available in deidentified form, through a
public open data platform co-hosted by IGIB and ICMR to enable research. The
joint research by CSIR-IGIB & IIT Alumni Council will focus on catalysing
the creation of an ecosystem for diagnostics and therapeutics for COVID19 as
well as flexible platforms for pandemic preparedness. The ecosystem will enable
an indigenous value chain with multidomain expertise spanning digital health,
artificial intelligence, molecular diagnostics, next generation sequencing,
antibody harvesting, and production of monoclonal antibodies.
“ IIT Alumni Council is extremely
pleased with the research partnership with IGIB . Both parties are viewing this
partnership as an opportunity not only to create a world leading testing and
treatment ecosystem in the country but also to establish global data leadership.
This would enable open data access to every scientist & innovator in the
world for development of bleeding edge testing and treatment solutions. IIT
Alumni Council believes that together with IGIB, we shall be able to to create
a robust high security Data Architecture for health Data. This partnership will
immensely help our two path breaking initiatives - World's largest MegaLab in
Mumbai for testing and India’s largest MegaTx antibody facility for treatment
based on biologics. Overall this partnership will open the doors for newer
forms and formats of collaboration between the Govt and domestic non-profits
like IIT Alumni Council.” said Ravi Sharma, President and Chief Volunteer of
the IIT Alumni Council.
“The energy and crowd sourced wisdom of the
IIT Alumni Council has been inspiring. Their global networks contain highly
motivated volunteers with capacity of thinking and acting locally, bringing
together a much needed set of skills in difficult times. NSCI Dome has served
as a model for scalable community treatment of COVID-19, and is a rich source
of learning through its practices and data. One can see it as a data and
engineering social initiative driven by volunteers, which would be of much use
to the biomedical community . As part of the jury for the MegaLab competition,
I look forward to seeing the world’s largest and fastest molecular diagnostic
line getting built in India with 100% indigenous technology. Similar thinking
would be needed to accelerate population scale testing in rare genetic disorders,
a problem that IGIB has been addressing for over a decade ” added Dr Anurag
Agrawal, Director of CSIR-IGIB.
Members of CSIR-IGIB and IIT Alumni
Council have been brainstorming regarding areas of testing and treatment for
COVID-19 since April 2020. Several new concepts with transformative potential
have emerged from these interactions.
IIT Alumni Council is an autonomous and
independent global body of alumni of all the twenty-three IITs and partnering
Technical Institutes of Excellence Network (TieNet). The IIT Alumni Council
aspires to catalyse India’s technological renaissance. Through its initiatives
, IIT Alumni Council intends to act as a network and as a bridge between
various providers of knowledge, wealth, information, wisdom, ideas, expertise
and entrepreneurship to promote technological solutions to problems facing
India under its 100 global city initiative. The Council has rallied the
considerable resources of the global IIT alumni ecosystem to catalyse
technological and financial interventions for the C19 battle. For more
information on IIT Alumni Council, visit: www.iitalumnicouncil.org
CSIR-IGIB is one of the premier research
laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, carrying out
advanced research in biochemical technology and genomic including various
aspects of molecular medicine. It is an ICMR recognized institution for
conducting COVID19 testing and validation of new tools and tests. It is also an
authorized repository of data and biological samples.
A distinguished Alumnus of IIT Roorkee,
former Corporate leader and now full time Philanthropist - Ravi Sharma plays an
active role in global revitalisation and unification of IIT alumni across
countries, across IITs and across age groups. He is the President and Chief
Volunteer of the IIT Alumni Council and also leads the Institute Outreach &
Branding initiatives. The main deliverables of the Council are facilitating
alumni networking, fortifying Brand IIT and Brand India, catalysing alumni
participation in nation building and accelerating technological developments in
key areas of our economy including start-ups, manufacturing and digital
transformation. The Council has six operating missions - Alumni Networking
(PanIIT Alumni) , Mentorship (PanIIT Institute), Social Venture funding (PanIIT
Fund), CSR Platform (PanIIT Foundation), a Thinktank (PanIIT Forum) a
Biomolecule Mega Incubator (PanIIT Incubator). The IIT Alumni Council is now
actively engaged in solving the corona crisis and has formed the C19 Task Force
which has the participation of over 20,000 alumni and includes Mumbai
University and ICT Mumbai as institutional partners. C19 Task Force initiatives
include MegaLab Mumbai, MegaTx NCR and the MegaFund.
PHOTO
CAPTION: Handing over of Mumbai Covid Data to Dr
Anurag Agarwal (on the right), a MBBS from AIIMS and Director of CSIR – IGIB by
Ravi Sharma, President IIT Alumni Council in New Delhi at the CSIR IGIB
Headquarters on July 7th, 2020.
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