Alumnus gifts IIT-Kgp 46cr to set up digi-engg-AI school

Kolkata: An IIT-Kharagpur alumnus has pledged 5 million US dollars or Rs 46 crore to his alma mater over a five-year period to establish a school of digital engineering, applied artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance the institute's initiatives in AI, digital technologies and affordable healthcare innovation. This is the highest donation that the tech school has received from an individual in the recent past. The proposed school will be the first fully integrated digital engineering and applied AI engine, embedded in IIT's hospital and clinical ecosystem.
Jyoti Chatterjee, a mechanical engineering graduate of 1977, now settled in California, signed an MoU with IIT-Kharagpur on Monday. The school, which will be named after Chatterjee, will be integrated within IIT-Kgp's innovation system, including the School of Medical Science and Technology, the Centre for Research in Digital Healthcare Technology, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Super Speciality Hospital, AI and high-performance computing clusters, and institute-wide innovation and entrepreneurship platforms."It will be India's first fully integrated digital engineering and applied AI engine embedded inside a super-specialty hospital ecosystem, where algorithms meet patients, chips meet clinics and innovation meets society," said IIT-Kgp director Suman Chakraborty. "Jyoti Chatterjee School will power responsible AI for Bharat — converging robotics, cyber-physical systems, edge intelligence, deep neural architectures and digital infrastructure into deployable national capability." TOI had reported on Chatterjee's $ 1 million donation to IIT in Nov 2025 to develop the country's first indigenous low-field bedside MRI system. "I was born in Kolkata but I spent the first six months of my life on the IIT-Kgp campus. My father was a faculty member at the metallurgical engineering department. It gives me immense satisfaction to be back in IIT Kharagpur and foster this collaboration," Chatterjee said. "Through this initiative, I aim to position IIT-Kharagpur as a world leader in digital engineering, AI, IoT-driven applied tech, and translational innovation. It will support my alma mater in building a school that will advance frontier research in AI and data science, foster affordable healthcare innovation, enable translational product development and deep-tech entrepreneurship." Chakraborty said the school would begin with the initial seed fund of the earlier $1 million, backed by a structured five-year $5 million funding. "Unlike other AI centres, this school unifies digital engineering, AI and ML, IoT, cyber-physical systems, robotics, edge intelligence and biomedical AI, enabling full-stack innovation," he said. "It will host industry labs, deploy AI and IoT testbeds, run pilot-scale field validations and support translational maturation towards real-world adoption across healthcare, manufacturing, energy and infrastructure sectors."The IIT Kharagpur alumnus is a recipient of Henry M Chance Research Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and National Science Foundation Fellowship by the US govt.