Best Place To BuildDr. Mohanasankar S | “Students experimenting, building, failing, & learning is now the norm”| Ep. 17
CHAPTERS
Host setup: IIT Madras as a “builder” campus and introducing Prof. Mohanasankar
The host frames the series as a tour of IIT Madras’s innovation ecosystem and introduces Prof. Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam as a medical-tech “builder.” The conversation is set up to cover two major initiatives: the Brain Center and HTIC (Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre).
- •Podcast premise: why IIT Madras is a “best place to build”
- •Prof. Mohanasankar’s roles: Electrical Engineering faculty, heads Brain Center and HTIC
- •Positioning him as a med-tech builder bridging research, engineering, and impact
How the Brain Center began: a philanthropic seed and a frontier ambition
Prof. Mohanasankar explains the Brain Center’s origin through alumnus Kris Gopalakrishnan’s vision: research at the intersection of neuroscience and engineering. The team chose a bold frontier question—imaging the human brain at cellular-scale resolution—to put India at the cutting edge.
- •Kris Gopalakrishnan’s seed idea (2015–16): neuroscience + engineering intersection
- •Choosing a ‘frontier’ problem rather than incremental work
- •Goal: whole human brain maps across ages and disease groups
- •India producing globally visible neuroscience outputs
Why cellular-resolution brain imaging is hard: physics, slicing, and fragile tissue
The discussion breaks down the fundamental constraints of seeing inside brain tissue: light penetration limits and the gap between today’s millimeter-resolution imaging and micron-scale cellular structures. This forces physical sectioning, creating major mechanical and handling challenges.
- •Current CT/MRI: ~millimeter resolution vs cells: ~10–20 microns
- •Light cannot reliably penetrate deep tissue → must slice
- •Extremely thin slices (5–20 microns) are fragile and prone to warping/tearing
- •Freezing is required but risks cracking due to water expansion
- •Practical transfer of sections to slides becomes a core bottleneck
Engineering the Brain Center platform: instruments, thermodynamics, and throughput
Prof. Mohanasankar highlights that the Brain Center is largely an engineering and instrumentation project: preserving tissue, freezing without damage, slicing consistently, transferring sections, and imaging fast enough to scale. The platform is designed for high-quality, repeatable whole-brain mapping, not one-off demonstrations.
- •Delicate postmortem brain extraction and preservation of connectivity
- •Thermodynamics/mechanical design to freeze without cracking
- •Precision slicing + reliable transfer to glass slides
- •Imaging speed as a scaling constraint (aiming for 100+ brains)
- •Whole-system design mindset: from tissue to data pipeline
From sections to petabytes: reconstruction, visualization, and AI at extreme scale
Once imaging is done, the computational challenge begins: each brain becomes petabytes of data that must be stitched and analyzed. The team builds algorithms and visualization tools to make this data usable—even on consumer devices—while tackling difficult AI problems like cell identification at high accuracy.
- •Hundreds of GB per section → whole brain in petabytes
- •Reconstructing ~10,000 sections into coherent 3D maps
- •Visualizing petabyte-scale data without requiring a supercomputer
- •Mobile-friendly viewer that streams only needed cellular regions
- •AI challenges: counting/classifying billions of cells with high accuracy
What this unlocks: new neuroscience basics, disease comparisons, and tool-building
The Brain Center’s data enables foundational discoveries—basic questions like cell counts per region and developmental patterns—while also setting the stage for clinical breakthroughs via better anatomical reference maps. The work simultaneously produces reusable hardware/software platforms for future research and translation.
- •First-time detailed viewing of human brain microstructure
- •Basic neurobiology questions (density, cell types, regional variation) become tractable
- •Improved disease/age comparisons require whole-brain reference data
- •Early diagnosis/treatment could accelerate with better ground truth maps
- •Toolchain innovation: hardware + software co-developed for scalability
Collaboration at scale: hospitals, global partners, and ‘mission attracts talent’
The project’s complexity requires multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration across dozens of fields and many institutions. Prof. Mohanasankar argues collaboration is less “managed” and more enabled by a compelling mission that attracts strong partners who mutually rely on each other.
- •30–35 disciplines involved (engineering subfields + neuroscience + medicine)
- •15–20 medical institutions and ~30+ international collaborators
- •Partners often spend significant time physically at IIT Madras
- •Whole-brain focus differentiates the Brain Center from piecewise approaches
- •Public accessibility: data meant for high-schoolers to senior researchers
HTIC’s mission: fixing India’s medical device dependency with commercialization-first R&D
The conversation pivots to HTIC, which targets nearer-term impact by building indigenous medical devices that can be commercialized. The need is framed economically and strategically: India imports most high-tech devices, which affects cost, serviceability, and resilience during crises like COVID.
- •India’s medical device consumption ~₹1 lakh crore; ~80% imported
- •Import dependence creates pricing, maintenance, and access issues
- •Strategic vulnerability highlighted during COVID-era shortages/embargoes
- •HTIC’s success metrics: products shipped, partners enabled, patients impacted
- •R&D structured explicitly for market translation, not just publications
HTIC’s growth model: from government seed funding to a self-sustaining ecosystem
Prof. Mohanasankar outlines how HTIC was initiated with government support (DBT/BIRAC) and evolved into a self-sustaining center funded through industry projects and other sources. In parallel, the Brain Center’s funding pathway leans more on philanthropy and early high-risk public support.
- •HTIC origins: DBT seed support; BIRAC incubator support
- •HTIC now self-sustaining via industry/projects/philanthropy
- •Brain Center seed: Kris Gopalakrishnan + early risk by Principal Scientific Adviser’s office
- •Different time horizons: HTIC (near-term) vs Brain Center (deep science + tools)
- •Emphasis on owning knowledge, IP, and deep expertise for competitiveness
Case study—Mobile cataract surgery unit: engineering for rural access and policy constraints
A detailed story shows how HTIC turns an India-specific healthcare bottleneck into an engineering problem: cataract is a leading cause of blindness, but rural access to surgical facilities is limited. The solution required not just building a mobile OT platform, but navigating surgeon adoption and government policy that had banned non-hospital surgeries.
- •Problem reframed: cataract blindness persists due to access, not surgery cost
- •Rural surgeries require multiple trips; elderly patients face social/economic barriers
- •Design requirement: city-grade OT quality with minimal infrastructure (air/water/flat land)
- •Operational challenge: surgeon comfort + workflow reliability
- •Regulatory/policy hurdle: government ban due to past infection incidents; approvals expanded after demonstrated safety (e.g., 486 surgeries in pilot)
Trust and economics in indigenous med-tech: habits, incentives, and service realities
The host challenges the perceived lack of trust in Indian devices; Prof. Mohanasankar agrees and explains structural reasons. Low import duties, established purchasing habits, and India’s low service costs can make imports seem acceptable—until long-term costs, servicing limitations, and strategic dependence become problematic.
- •Structural handicap: no duty on imported devices but duty on components for local build
- •Market habit/comfort with established Western brands and service relationships
- •India’s healthcare affordability partly driven by low service costs and high volumes
- •Importing can appear rational economically, but maintenance/servicing is a key barrier
- •Long-term strategic risk of dependence on life-saving equipment supply chains
Electrical engineering as ‘building’: theory-to-product layers and interdisciplinary reality
Prof. Mohanasankar connects his EE background to med-tech by emphasizing that building solutions requires strong fundamentals plus layers of practical execution. He argues modern systems can’t be contained within departmental boundaries, and IIT Madras encourages risk-taking and cross-disciplinary building.
- •He teaches Instrumentation Engineering and Biomedical Electronic Systems
- •Building requires theory foundations plus scalability and productization skills
- •Product building adds supply chain, maintenance, upgrade, and legacy constraints
- •Departments are administrative; real systems mix mechanical/electrical/software/biology
- •IIT Madras culture: experiment, take risks, “build it and see”
Student experience shift: flexible curriculum, research/patents/startups as the new norm
The discussion turns to how IIT Madras education has evolved: large elective freedom, learning-how-to-learn, and hands-on building experiences. Prof. Mohanasankar describes a shift in student motivations toward participating in cutting-edge projects, and a more collaborative student–faculty dynamic shaped by faster iteration cycles.
- •~50% courses as free electives; exploration encouraged after initial core years
- •Education reframed as training in how to learn amid fast-changing tech (AI era)
- •Students heavily involved in lab outputs (papers/patents) as primary doers
- •Student–faculty relationship becomes collaborative; faculty also learn from students
- •Campus-wide rise of experimentation, failure, iteration, and entrepreneurship
Patents vs publications: what IP means and why commercialization needs it
Prof. Mohanasankar explains patents as legally enforceable property rights exchanged for public disclosure, distinct from publications that share knowledge without granting exclusive rights. He outlines why IP enables investment into high-risk R&D and how IIT Madras’s technology transfer processes support filing, maintaining, and licensing patents globally.
- •Patent = legal right to control use of an invention; publication doesn’t grant that right
- •IP incentivizes investment in high-risk R&D by enabling returns via licensing
- •Patents require country-specific filings and ongoing maintenance costs
- •Commercialization paths: licensing, assignment, enforcement/negotiation if infringed
- •IIT Madras tech transfer office drives IP commercialization alongside industry projects
Why join labs like HTIC/Brain Center: freedom, scale, outcomes, and global shifts
Closing segments focus on talent attraction and career outcomes: IIT Madras offers rare combinations of autonomy to build, high-quality R&D, and real commercialization pathways via industry or startups. Prof. Mohanasankar notes that some foreign environments are becoming more constrained, while India’s research capacity and global connectivity are rising—though inbound international diversity still has room to grow.
- •Value proposition: freedom to experiment + serious R&D + product/impact pathways
- •Multiple routes: startups, industry partnerships, or direct industry leadership roles
- •Alumni outcomes across academia, R&D leadership, and entrepreneurship
- •Global research environment constraints abroad can limit collaboration flexibility
- •Main ‘con’: inbound international exposure is improving but still thinner than top US hubs; expected to grow with India’s R&D scale (PPP-adjusted)
