This hasn’t gone unnoticed by alumni. Kris is joined by others who, having benefited richly from their time at IIT-M, have felt the urge to give back. The Centre for Data Sciences, for instance, will be funded by a million-dollar-grant from the 1989 batch. Many of the lab facilities across departments are alumni-funded, as are various amenities in the student hostels, the P. G. Senapathy Computer Centre, the mega-mess building named Himalaya, a new canteen named Quark, and the Sharavati hostel for women. The alumni network also rewards academic achievements, with scholarships for incoming students who need financial support, several prizes for the toppers in each discipline in a given year, and also prizes that are awarded on the Institute Day and the Convocation for deserving students in the graduating batch.

But as the alumni know well, there’s more to IIT Madras than academics. The squash court in the sports complex was funded by the 1986 batch. The campus will be hosting the Inter-IIT Sports Meet later this year, with generous contributions from various alumni. The alumni network also played a crucial role in the recent success of the IIT Madras team that won the Longitudinal Multiple Sclerosis Segmentation Challenge in New York, beating 33 other teams from some of the best universities around the world, including Harvard and University College London.