Hello, Richa! Thank you for sitting with us today. Why don’t you start by introducing yourselves to the InSDB readers?
Hello! Firstly, it was really nice of the society to give me this platform to share what I’ve been doing so far. So, thank you.
I am currently working at the IIT Madras, Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre as the chief scientific officer and we started this work in March 2020. So, it’s been roughly four and a half years since then. By training, I did my undergrad in Optometry and then did my PhD in retinal electrophysiology. This was the first time when I started getting into full-time research, and also getting into neuroscience.
I then did my postdoc in non-human primates, doing electrophysiology and neuroanatomy. And, after that, I realized that this is where I want to be and this is what I want to do. My PhD and postdoc was in Australia, at the University of Melbourne, and then at Monash University. I then took a faculty position at Deakin University, again in Melbourne, where I was teaching in the School of Optometry but also primarily in visual neuroscience and retinal physiology.
In 2017, I moved to India and started working at IIT Madras. This particular work at Brain Center started in 2020. We got funded two weeks before the start of the COVID lockdown. I’ve been working with the center since then, and it’s really nice to have reached the point where I am right now.
That’s quite a journey! How did the center start, and what does it do right now?
The center started with funding from the Principal Scientific Advisor, Govt of India’s office and at that time, the PSA of India was Professor VijayRaghvan. We got funding under the title “Human Brain Mapping Project” and we started with adult brains, which we are still working on. But pretty much within three to six months into early 2020, we started looking at the developing human brain. Apart from the PSA’s office, we also got funding from Pratiksha Trust. Also, thanks to Krish Gopalakrishnan, who started the Center for Computational Brain Research in 2014. Since 2020, we have also received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Premji Invest, and Canadian Friends of IIT Madras.
Back then, there was a lot of data from computational neuroscience, but no neuroanatomy lab, which started only after the funding from the PSA office under the human brain project and that’s where I came into the picture. Our overarching goal is to map the whole human brain at the cellular level. This involved building this platform and the massive task of bringing together engineers- mechanical electrical- computational teams, neuroscientists, clinicians, etc.
But I have to be grateful that four and a half years in, things have come together with so many different people working together to make it happen.
How has it been working in such an interdisciplinary environment?
It’s been great. At first, there was a bit of, “I know this, we do it a certain way, I’m a specialist in this, so we do it a certain way.” But now, if you come here, most of the engineers know what cryosectioning is, and as a neuroscientist, I know, to a large extent, about the workings of the cryostat instrument. Today, if you ask me, what is one petabyte of data, I know what it means. So we’ve come a long way. It has been quite a journey, we’ve learned to speak each other’s language. I have to say that having an interdisciplinary team is what made this project possible. Without the team that comes with such diversity, it would have been a mammoth task to make this work.
So, how is the human brain project progressing?
It’s going well, though it’s a lot of work. The physical center is only two and a half years old; it was inaugurated in March 2022. Since then, we have processed and digitized close to around 40 brains, focusing more on developing brains and a few adult brains. We work closely with our clinical partners, and they work in making sure we get high-quality brain samples at reasonable post-mortem intervals. Despite their busy schedules, they have been working very closely with us because they understand the importance of the work. We have also started looking at not just neurotypical brains but also developmental disorders in parallel. So, it’s going well, and we are making significant progress.
That’s fantastic! Could you tell us about the team at the center?
The center has one principal investigator (PI), which is how most of the funding works, and then we have co-PIs. Professor Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam at the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras heads the Brain Centre. We also have additional faculty, co-PIs, neuroscientists, lead engineers, research associates, histotechnicians, computational engineers, a few postdocs, and one Ph.D. student currently.
Is your work structured like a traditional institute with different labs working on different questions, or is it more of a combined effort toward a singular goal?
The center started with the overarching goal of mapping the whole human brain at the cellular level. Everything was built to be able to do so, which means we don’t have specific hypotheses driving our work. Usually, when people work with human or animal brains, they look at a specific region and work on certain hypotheses. We, instead, collect data, and then we start asking specific questions based on what we find. Now with different verticals within the center, we are looking at specific questions. So, it’s a mix of both right now. This approach allows us to collaborate with key experts in the field, both within India and internationally. We have key collaborators in the US, a few in Europe, and South Africa, who are working closely with us on this.
So, the clinicians you’re working with, are they from a specific region, or is it a nationwide collaboration?
We have partners like CMC Vellore, Saveetha Medical College, NIMHANS Bangalore, Mediscan, AIIMS Delhi, and a couple of hospitals in Gujarat. So, it is nationwide. However, because we need postmortem brain samples, and because there is a time constraint, we are working closely with hospitals and institutes within Chennai.
The adult brain extraction is done by the forensic department. The fetal brain extraction is done by the fetal pathologist. So work with the forensic department, the pathology department, the radiology department in each of these hospitals.
what are the overarching public benefits that this project aims to achieve?
By the end of this year, we hope to make a significant portion of our data freely accessible as an open resource. That’s the first order of things. Two, we are collaborating with institutes both in and outside India, encouraging people with diverse backgrounds to work together to close knowledge gaps. We map the brain using neuroanatomy. We want people who ask the same question using a molecular tool, who do imaging, or who are working with organoids. So, in the long term, we want to integrate various tools and methods and collaborate extensively.
How did you come to know about InSDB?
We received an email from Sonia, sharing the conference details. We had connected with her earlier in January, so she knew about our work. That’s how I got to know about the society and decided to attend the conference. This might sound silly, but ever since I moved to India, my work has been inside IITs, and I didn’t realize there were so many biologists in India! So, the conference was an enlightening experience. I connected with people like Dr. Achira Roy from JNCASR and Dr. Bhavana Muralidharan from InStem. In the next couple of months after attending the conference in Feb, I had a series of visits to JNCASR and NCBS and now we have good collaborations with them. Achira visited us last month. We are also working with Bhavana. The work has already started. So this wasn’t just a meeting for me. Most of the time, you go to meetings, connect with people, you talk about collaboration, but nothing comes out of it. But it was different with the InSDB meeting.
That’s wonderful to hear! It makes us happy as well. Is there anything you would like InSDB to take up or initiate that you think would benefit a lot of people?
I think it would be beneficial for the society to facilitate more interaction among students and young researchers. At a place like IIT, we do not have that many biologists. So societies like this would be a lot beneficial for people like me and the students here. While the annual meeting is great, it would be nice to have more frequent meetings where people can share their ideas. This could help younger researchers, especially those working in interdisciplinary fields, to connect, collaborate, and broaden their perspectives.
Apart from work, what keeps you going and excited? How do you balance it all?
Well, that’s a tough question! I enjoy catching up with friends and family over the weekends, though not as frequently as I’d like. When I travel for work, I make it a point to meet friends or family I haven’t seen in ages. Honestly, I don’t do anything super exciting outside of work, it’s mostly about meeting friends and family whenever possible.
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You can connect with Richa here.
