IIT Madras Joins Hedera Governing Council to Drive R&D in New Blockchain Use Cases

DALLAS and CHENNAI, India, Sept. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Hedera Hashgraph, the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public network for the decentralized economy, today announced the newest member of its Governing Council.

The globally-renowned technology university joins a rotating council of up to 39 global organizations that are from a diverse array of industries and geographies, and each runs an initial network node that enables the decentralized governance model for the Hedera public ledger.

As a newly appointed member of the Hedera Governing Council, IIT Madras will work closely with the Hedera ecosystem to advance its technical education, research, and innovation offerings in distributed ledger technology (DLT). IIT Madras will also use its term on the Hedera Council to ramp up its R&D efforts in the DLT space, testing use cases leveraging key services, such as the Hedera Consensus Service and the Hedera Token Service.

Speaking about this collaboration, said Prof. Prabhu Rajagopal Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras, who leads Remote Diagnostics at IIT Madras' Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE), said, "We have identified enormous potential in Hedera Hashgraph, already the most used, and sustainable public ledgers on the market today, and we look forward to utilising the Hedera Consensus and Token Services to study potentially ground-breaking new use cases. IIT Madras is recognised globally for pioneering work in areas such as renewable energy, telecommunications, non-destructive testing, biomedicine, healthcare and information and communication technologies (ICT), and its renowned tech alumni community."

Further, Prof. Prabhu Rajagopal said, "With this network, we aim to bring substantial value to the Hedera Governing Council, utilising our expertise in practical and innovative technological solutions to assist other council members and organizations in use case development. I am particularly enthused by the opportunity to test and scale our solutions in blockchain backed information systems in healthcare, industry and digital media."

Prof. Rajagopal's group is interested in the securitization of large scale digital data-sets arising from sensor logs, which was the initial catalyst for their interest in blockchain and distributed ledgers.

IIT Madras' appointment to the Hedera Governing Council comes just weeks after the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), one of the UK's top universities, announced its membership to the Hedera Governing Council, bolstering the council's role within academia.

Established in 1956, IITs (at Madras and several other Indian cities) count Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former president of the SoftBank Group, Nikesh Arora, among its alumni. Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and founder of Khosla Ventures, noted to CBS that, "The IITs probably are the hardest school in the world to get into, to the best of my knowledge"^[1].

Regarded as one of the top universities in the world, IIT has established research expertise in DLT, served as an incubator for India's National Blockchain Project, and most recently, developed 'BlockTrack', a first-of-its-kind blockchain-based secure medical data and information exchange mobile application for use by both medical providers and patients. BlockTrack aims to securely digitize healthcare information systems while protecting sensitive medical records by decentralizing the control and ownership of patient data, and is currently being field-tested at IIT Madras Institute Hospital.

"The addition of IITM to the Hedera Governing Council is a significant and exciting development for the Hedera community and the wider DLT industry. Throughout the history of IIT, its alumni and academic staff have made substantial contributions to groundbreaking research in technology and innovation. This brings enormous value to the Hedera Council and will undoubtedly guide the development of critical use cases built on the Hedera network. Combined with the appointment of LSE, and the ongoing work being done by University College London (UCL), this marks another remarkable step forward for the relationship between academia and the decentralized economy," said Mance Harmon, CEO and Co-founder of Hedera Hashgraph.

ABOUT HEDERA HASHGRAPH

Hedera Hashgraph is the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public network for the decentralized economy. The platform is governed by a council of the world's leading organizations, including Avery Dennison, Boeing, Chainlink Labs, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, EDF (Électricité de France), eftpos, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), LG Electronics, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Magalu, Nomura Holdings, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank Group, Swirlds, Tata Communications, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group.

For more information, visit www.hedera.com, or follow us on Twitter at @hedera, Telegram at t.me/hederahashgraph, or Discord at www.hedera.com/discord. The Hedera whitepaper can be found at www.hedera.com/papers.

ABOUT IIT MADRAS

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) was established in 1959 by the Government of India as an 'Institute of National Importance.' The activities of the Institute in various fields of Science and Technology are carried out in 16 academic departments and several advanced interdisciplinary research academic centres. The Institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes leading to B.Tech., M.Sc., M.B.A., M.Tech., M.S., and Ph.D., degrees in a variety of specialisations. IITM is a residential institute with more than 600 faculty and 9,500 students. Students from 18 countries are enrolled here. IITM fosters an active entrepreneurial culture with strong curricular support and through the IITM Incubation Cell.

IITM has been ranked No.1 in the 'Overall' Category for the third consecutive year in India Ranking 2021 released by National Institutional Ranking Framework, Ministry of Education, Govt. of India. The Institute has also been ranked No.1 in the 'Engineering Institutions' category in the same Rankings for six consecutive years – from 2016 to 2021. It was also adjudged as the 'Top innovative Institution' in the country in Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) in 2019 and 2020. ARIIA Ranking was launched by the Innovation Cell of Ministry of Education.

Follow IIT Madras on Facebook: ReachIITM

Follow IIT Madras on Twitter: @iitmadras

MEDIA CONTACT FOR IIT MADRAS

Bhavani Giddu - Footprint Global Communications
Cell: 9999500262 / Email: [email protected] 

Sairam Radhakrishnan - IIT Madras Media Cell, Chennai
Cell: 9840108083/ Email: [email protected]

Iqra Razi – Footprint Global Communications
Cell: 8920294698 / Email: [email protected]

MEDIA CONTACT FOR HEDERA

Zenobia Godschalk, Hedera - [email protected]

Matt Turner, Wachsman
Cell: +353 87-794-2017 / Email: [email protected]

^[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/imported-from-india/

SOURCE Hedera Hashgraph