On the evening of April 30, I had the privilege of participating in a fireside chat at the Consulate General of India in Atlanta, an experience that left me inspired, energized, and newly convinced that some of the most important work in global health will be accomplished not by a single institution but through partnerships built on trust and sustained over time.
The event, focused on Emory University’s growing collaborations with India, was inaugurated by Consul General Ramesh Babu Lakshmanan, whose warmth and intellectual curiosity set exactly the right tone. The moderator was Nita Sardana, chief impact officer of Innova Solutions, who guided a wide-ranging conversation with exceptional grace and precision. Joining me on stage was my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Venkat
Narayan, whose decades of partnership with India on diabetes research and global health exemplify what deep, sustained collaboration can achieve. Dr. Jane Gatewood of Emory opened the evening with remarks highlighting the breadth of the university’s engagement with India.
The conversation touched on several themes that matter deeply to me and, I believe, to the Indian American community in Atlanta and beyond.
For nearly a decade, my research group has collaborated with Tata Medical Center in Kolkata on AI-driven digital pathology tools designed to identify women with breast cancer who may be able to safely avoid chemotherapy. This work began with support from a joint U.S. Department of State and Department of Biotechnology program in 2017 and later led to $6 million in National Cancer Institute funding in 2021. It is exactly the kind of science that becomes possible through sustained India-U.S. collaboration, and it has the potential to directly benefit Indian women who deserve the same precision of care as patients anywhere in the world.
Another key theme was the importance of developing AI diagnostic tools for the realities of low- and middle-income countries. Frugal AI is not a compromise. It is a necessity. India, with its vast and diverse patient populations and extraordinary scientific talent, is not simply a recipient of Western medical technology but a co-creator of better science. The constraints of resource-limited settings often inspire innovations that ultimately improve care for patients everywhere, including here in the United States.
Equally important is the bidirectional nature of this partnership. Knowledge flows both ways. India offers scale, biological diversity, and innovation born of necessity, making the science stronger for all of us. Lessons learned at Tata Medical Center or in a public hospital in Hyderabad directly inform the tools we develop for patients in Atlanta.
At a time when federal funding for international research collaboration has been significantly curtailed, Dr. Narayan and I spoke directly to the South Asian community about the urgent need for philanthropic and private investment. The Indian American diaspora has built extraordinary wealth, expertise, and institutional capacity in this country. The question is whether we will channel some of those resources toward work that strengthens our ties with India and benefits patients who are still waiting for the promise of precision medicine.
For 30 years, Khabar has chronicled the story of this community, its arrivals and achievements, its debates and aspirations. The fireside chat at the Consulate was one small chapter in a much larger story: an Indian American scientific community that has not forgotten where it came from and believes its greatest contribution may be to build bridges, not walls, between the country that shaped us and the country that gave us a home.
For 30 years, Khabar has chronicled the story of this community, its arrivals and achievements, its debates and aspirations. The fireside chat at the Consulate was one small chapter in a much larger story: an Indian American scientific community that has not forgotten where it came from and believes its greatest contribution may be to build bridges, not walls, between the country that shaped us and the country that gave us a home.
I left the evening grateful for Consul General Lakshmanan’s leadership in convening the conversation, for Nita Sardana’s thoughtful moderation, for Dr. Narayan’s enduring example of sustained commitment, and for everyone in the room who came because they care about the future of science and collaboration.
India gave me my curiosity. America gave me the tools. And Atlanta has given me the place to put them to work for patients here and around the world.
Dr. Anant Madabhushi is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech and the founding director of the Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of Georgia Trend’s Georgia 500 list of the state’s most influential leaders, he is among the world’s most cited researchers in AI and medicine. His laboratory’s work spans cancer, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and global health, with active collaborations in India, Uganda, and Tanzania.