Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a UChicago professor for nearly 60 years, was born in Lahore in 1910. He attended Presidency College Madras before he left India for Cambridge in 1930. He began his career
Science, Energy, Medicine, Public Health
Current Programs and Partnerships
University of Chicago scientists have made key partnerships in India that accelerate scientific advancements of international importance.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Indian Department of Atomic Energy, Fermilab works with several Indian institutions to advance technologies for next-generation particle accelerators, including the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Center, and the Inter University Accelerator Centre. These technological developments benefit both research and industry.
Argonne National Laboratory collaborates with a number of Indian research organizations on many projects, including with the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur on bio-diesel fuel, the Society of Indian Automotive Manufacturers and Society of Automotive Engineers-India on vehicle growth projections, the India Institute of Technology on the MINOTAUR software package, India’s National Automotive Research and Development Infrastructure Project on hybrid vehicles, and the Indian Institute of Science and the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences on the Ganges Valley Aerosol Experiment to study pollutants’ effects on clouds and monsoons.
Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division and the UChicago-Argonne Computation Institute supplied software and expertise to the GARUDA project, India’s national grid computing initiative. Researchers from the same team also created the Indo-US Cancer Research Grid using Globus technologies to provide researchers and clinicians access to information about clinical research, imaging, molecular biology, and pathology. UChicago’s Biological Sciences Division and the Computation Institute work with Amrita University to develop a systems-biology platform to help researchers gain new insights into the genetic basis of diseases.
Valluvan Jeevanandam, Professor of Surgery and Chief of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery, specializes in the surgical management of heart failure and is an expert in high-risk cardiac surgery. He has performed more than 1,000 heart transplants and has started high risk and cardiac assist programs internationally, including in India, where he returns several times a year to perform surgery and meet with colleagues.
UChicago’s Center for Global Health is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to improving health and well-being through education, research and training, and service in partnership with communities in the United States and around the world. Under the Center's programs, over 60 UChicago medical students, residents, and faculty have partnered in in clinical research with a variety of public health organizations in India and South Asia. The center’s international partner sites include Science Health Allied Research Education (SHARE) in Hyderabad, Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences, and the Public Health Foundation of India. Students, residents, clinical observers, and visiting professionals from SHARE-India can participate in the center’s exchange program to learn and train under UChicago faculty members.
John Schneider, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, oversees several NIH-funded research projects that are advancing HIV prevention among some of the highest risk community members in South India. He is also a long-time partner of SHARE-India as well as the Sivanandam Rehabilitation Home (SRH), a space for people with leprosy which is also an AIDS orphanage and provides testing for TB. Dr. Schneider is also Director of the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination with an agenda to eliminate new HIV transmission events over a 30 year period.
Dr. Sola Olopade, Professor of Medicine and Clinical Director, Center for Global Health, recently developed a project to evaluate the extent, impact and prevention of exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass on respiratory function and health in women and children in Nigeria and Bangladesh.
Dr. Habibul Ahsan, Louis Block Professor of Public Health Sciences, Medicine and Human Genetics Director, Center for Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, has been working in Bangladesh for almost ten years to mitigate the effect of exposure to high arsenic levels in the water supply
Campus Connections
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a UChicago professor for nearly 60 years, received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. Born in Lahore and educated in Madras, he determined that stars with a mass greater than 1.4 times that of the sun — now known as the "Chandrasekhar mass" — must eventually collapse into an object of enormous density, today known as a black hole.
In 2001, UChicago Professor and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno joined an expedition led by Suresh Srivastava of the Geological Survey of India and Ashok Sahni of Panjab University to uncover Rajasaurus narmadensis, the first fossil remains found from an Indian dinosaur.
A number of Indian organizations—including the Indian Institute of Science, the Inter-University Accelerator Center in New Delhi, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai—conduct research at Argonne’s scientific user facilities.