Public health centre to come up at IISc, funded by Quess founder, wife

An MoU was signed with the Issacs for the centre, which will be called the Isaac Centre for Public Health.
Public health centre to come up at IISc, funded by Quess founder, wife

BENGALURU: Staffing and human resource firm Quess Corp founder Ajit Issac and his wife Sarah Isaac on Thursday committed Rs 105 crore to establish a Centre for Public Health at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. This comes a month after Mindtree co-founders’ philanthropic commitment for setting up the IISc Medical School.

An MoU was signed with the Issacs for the centre, which will be called the Isaac Centre for Public Health. “We are extremely pleased to announce that Ajit Isaac, Founder and Chairman of Quess Corp, and Sarah Isaac have committed Rs 105 crore to establish a Centre for Public Health at the upcoming IISc Medical School,” IISc said.

The centre will commence operations by 2024, and is expected to encourage aspirants to pursue careers in clinical research to develop new treatments and healthcare solutions, driven by a bench-to-bedside philosophy. The new centre will be part of the postgraduate Medical School, soon to be established on campus.

“There is an acute need for India to have a world-class centre for clinical and academic research in public health, to be able to make quicker and more impactful strides in realising the goal of quality healthcare for all. The proposed centre will interface between all departments of the IISc Medical School, and also science and engineering departments of IISc in the context of public health research,” said IISc director Govindan Rangarajan.

The Centre will offer dual degree programmes such as MPH-PhD and MPH-MTech (Research). It will also provide funding for research projects in public health, including bio-surveillance, digital health and mobile-based diagnostics. The funding will support international fellowships for students, scholarships, visiting chair professorships and endowed chair professorships.

“The centre will create a niche for health data science and analytics through close collaboration with the existing world-class computer science and data science departments at IISc, putting it on par with international counterparts like the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,” he added.

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