THE Collaborative of the health and life sciences of MIT (MIT Heals) Launches the Postdoctoral Biswas scholarship program to advance the work of exceptional researchers at the start of their career in health and life sciences. Supported by a gift from the Biswas Family Foundation, the program aims to apply advanced research to improve health care and the life of millions.
The program will support exceptional post-doctoral students dedicated to innovation in human health care through a full range of routes, such as AI drawing in health related to health, the development of low-cost diagnostics and the convergence of life sciences with areas such as economics, business, policies or human sciences. With initial funding of $ 12 million, five four -year scholarships will be awarded for each of the next four years, from the beginning of 2026.
“An essential objective of the healing of MIT is to find new ways and opportunities to provide large -scale health care solutions, and the Biswas Family Foundation shares our commitment to evolutionary innovation and a large impact. MIT is also in the talent sector, and the foundation's gift allows us to make exceptional researchers on the campus to explore some of the most pressed problems in human health and the construction of significant ties through university studies and industry. MIT, ”explains the president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth.
“We are deeply honored to launch this postdoctoral program of world class,” adds Annantha P. Chandrakasan, director of MIT innovation and strategy and MIT chief. “We are fully expecting to attract the best candidates from around the world to direct innovative transversal cutting projects in AI and health, therapies against cancer, diagnostics and beyond. These scholarship holders will be selected thanks to a rigorous process supervised by a distinguished committee and will have the opportunity to collaborate with our most promising and efficient ideas faculty. ”
Angela Koehler, leader of the faculty of MIT Heals, professor in the Biological Engineering Department of MIT, and associate director of Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, stressed that the objectives of the MIT healed well with a declared objective of the Biswas family foundation on “global health”.
“Health care is a team sport,” says Koehler. “The MIT Heals seeks to create links involving investigators with diversified expertise through the Institute to tackle the most transformer problems with an impact on human health. Members of the MIT community are well proven to participate in the teams and have an impact.
MIT Heals also seeks to maximize its effectiveness by expanding collaboration with medical schools and hospitals, starting by defining important problems that can be discussed by research and pursuing to clinical studies, says Koehler.
The Biswas Family Foundation has already demonstrated a similar strategy.
“The Biswas family has a story of activation of connections and partnerships between the institutions that each bring a piece to the puzzle,” explains Koehler. “It could be a set of data, an algorithm, an agent, a technological platform or patients.”
Hope Biswas, co-founder of the Biswas Family Foundation with her husband, the former student of MIT Sanjit Biswas SM '05, also underlined the synergies between the Foundation and the MIT.
“The Biswas family foundation is proud to support the Mit Heals initiative, which reinstates how scientific discovery can result in an impact on real health.
“As part of this commitment,” adds Biswas, “we are particularly proud to support exceptional postdoctoral researchers focused on interdisciplinary work with high impact in fields such as computer biology, nanometric therapy, women's health and fundamental expanses and life sciences focused on curiosity and deep knowledge.
AI and automatic learning systems have a new universe of opportunities to study disease, biological mechanisms, therapy and health care provision using huge data sets.
“The AI and the biology of calculation systems can improve the accuracy of diagnostic approaches, allow the development of precision drugs, improve the choices linked to the individualized treatment strategy and improve operational efficiency in health care systems,” explains Koehler. “Sanjit and Hope support for large initiatives in AI biology and calculation systems will help researchers at the end of exploring a variety of paths to have a large -scale human health impact.”
Borders in health related research are increasingly where various areas converge, and Koehler provides the example of how advanced advances in high speed experimentation to develop large data sets “may well couple the development of new calculation or AI”. She adds that the term four -year financing provided by the postdoctoral scholarship is “long enough to allow scholarship holders to think big and take projects in interfaces, emerging as bilingual researchers at the end of the program.”
Chandrakasan sees the potential of the biswes program to make revolutionary progress in health research.
“I am incredibly grateful to the Biswas Family Foundation for their generous support to allow transformative research at MIT,” said Chandrakasan.
