Successful Indian entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who recently made it to the 2010 Times 100 list, has funded to launch a new fellowship on cancer research in India at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Announced early this week during her visit to Boston, the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellows Programme is a high-impact, bilateral collaboration with India focusing on cancer research training as its cornerstone.
Funded by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chair and managing director of Biocon, one of India's largest biotechnology firms, the fellowship will bring Indian scientists to MIT to train for two years.
Those researchers will then return to India to help jump-start cancer research programs there.
It's broader mission is to build India's position as an intellectual hub for oncology research from which significant advances are expected to emerge.
The programme offers opportunities for postdoctoral scientists, engineers and physicians to undertake cancer research at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, working at the interfaces between biology/medicine and
the diverse fields of mathematics, engineering, computer science and the physical and chemical sciences.
"As an entrepreneur whose company is pursuing cancer research, I am acutely aware of the need to augment cancer research in the country at a basic scientific level," Mazumdar-Shaw said in a statement.
"If we are to develop new onco-therapies for Indian patients, we must create a strong research ethos amongst the medical and scientific communities engaged in the area of cancer," she said.