Alumnus endowment to support IISc faculty in medical research

Bengaluru: IISc alumnus SR Venkatramanan and his wife, Usha Venkatramanan, have made a contribution to establish two chair professorships in the upcoming postgraduate medical school at the institute.

The professorships are established in memory of Venkatramanan’s parents, SS Ramaswamy and M Seethalakshmi.

IISc said the ‘Usha and SR Venkatramanan Family Endowment’ would support, in perpetuity, young faculty members at the assistant professor level working on cutting-edge medical research, specifically in endocrinology and nephrology.

G Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said the generous contribution would foster cutting-edge medical research.

IISc is “rapidly moving forward” with its plans to establish a postgraduate medical school, along with the Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital, on campus. “The endowment will enable us to host and encourage exceptional young researchers driving advances in medical research,” he said.

California-based Venkatramanan is the founder of NetCracker Systems. He completed his BE in Electrical Technology and MTech in Physical Engineering from IISc in 1975 and 1977 respectively.

He has since worked in Isro and other organisations such as Sun Microsystems, Dell Technologies, and Yahoo.

Venkatramanan highlighted the daily struggles of children with Type-1 diabetes and people with impaired kidneys who rely on machines for their basic living. “Stem cell research offers promising solutions for these challenges. I hope that IISc leads the way in addressing these critical health issues,” he said.