{"id":58115,"date":"2024-04-23T09:51:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T13:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu\/?p=58115"},"modified":"2024-09-30T12:04:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:04:02","slug":"genetics-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu\/2024\/04\/genetics-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Annual Symposium Preview: Genetics and Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Vijay Chandru<\/strong>, one of the speakers in the \u201cGenetics and Medicine\u201d panel at LMSAI\u2019s Annual Cambridge Symposium: Science and Technology<\/a>, is a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. He is an academic entrepreneur, having founded several digital health companies including Strand Life Sciences<\/a>, a life science informatics and precision medicine solutions company based in Bangalore, India, after spending 23 years in academia. He was recognized as a \u201cTechnology Pioneer\u201d by the World Economic Forum and was recently elected a Fellow<\/a> of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC. He shared more about his life\u2019s work in the Q&A below.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_button button_url=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NoAHHvwiMFs” url_new_window=”on” button_text=”WATCH HERE” button_alignment=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_layout=”dark” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_button][et_pb_divider _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”2_3,1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”2_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||-30px|||” custom_padding=”||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Mittal Institute:<\/strong><\/span> Vijay, thank you for speaking with us ahead of our Annual Cambridge Symposium! You began your career as an academic, having taught data and decision science for over two decades at Purdue University, Indiana, and the Indian Institute of Science. Can you tell our community what \u201cdata and decision science\u201d means to you, and why you initially decided to enter academia?<\/strong><\/p>\n Vijay Chandru:<\/strong>I trained in electrical engineering in India and at UCLA, and at MIT, I chose to focus on systems science and operations research which were the mathematical and computational methods for modeling and decision support in a variety of applied domains. This included logistics and manufacturing, energy management, and engineering design of semiconductors and communication networks. Electrical engineers, like physicists, are natural intellectual poachers and I enjoyed using the tools I had at my disposal to enter new domains and have some impact.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Dr.-Chandru-portrait-c.jpg” title_text=”Dr.-Chandru-portrait-c” _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”30px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Dr. Vijay Chandru.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”20px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n The choice of an academic career happened as I really enjoyed teaching, and I felt that staying in academia would allow me to hone my analytical skills. At Purdue University, as an assistant professor, I studied, taught, and carried out research in computational geometry and computational logic towards automated theorem proving, which was then considered the foundation for machine intelligence.<\/p>\n After my tenure at Purdue, I moved to India \u2013 first on a sabbatical \u2013 and found colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science and at the Centre for AI and Robotics in Bangalore with whom I worked on machine learning in the 1990s well before artificial intelligence and machine learning became fashionable. Around 1996, together with three colleagues, I convened the Perceptual Computing Lab (\u201cpercolat\u201d). We built a reputation of audacious (extreme) engineering, which began by exploring translational problems that could be addressed by algorithmic problem-solving. A senior mentor at the Institute, Professor Roddam Narasimha, anointed us the keepers of the classical Indian tradition of computational positivism (drik + ganita = Siddhanta), which says that all knowledge follows from observation and calculation. It was a splendid time and resulted in the handheld \u201cSimputer\u201d that made a huge splash as a device of radical simplicity for universal access bridging the digital divide. These \u201cpercolat\u201d years also prepared us for a launch into entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n