Technology meets talent: IIT Madras' Acrophase Initiative launches under-19 sports scholarship
Kolkata, Oct 30
Sports today is no longer about raw physical and mental effort and practice. A lot of it has to do with technology that determines under what circumstances a sportsperson achieves peak potential.
Keeping this in mind, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has launched the SBI Foundation ACE Potential Athlete Sports Scholarship for able-bodied national-level athletes aged 15-19 years.
The programme will support 90 young athletes - 45 boys and 45 girls - across athletics, swimming, boxing, wrestling, shooting, archery and badminton.
Selected athletes will receive a monthly stipend of Rs 40,000, along with sports science-based performance assessments and personalised nutrition guidance from IIT Madras-Acrophase, supporting them as they train and compete at higher levels.
"Behind every promising athlete are years of training, discipline and the ambition to go further. But talent alone is not enough; the right support can shape how far that journey goes," IIT Madras says.
In a LinkedIn post, the institute has said: "Acrophase, an IIT Madras initiative, is India's first human performance research centre driven to build superhumans capable of pushing the limits. Through a unique confluence of wearable industry experts, researchers from IIT Madras, and experts in human physiology and biomechanics, we curate performance enhancement programs for people at all levels. We do this by leveraging the benefits of data-driven technology in synergy with expert insights from physiology, biomechanics & behavioural psychology."
Acrophase is a social-impact-driven performance science initiative emerging from the research and innovation ecosystem of IIT Madras.
The initiative is built on the institute's strengths in engineering, biomedical science, and data analytics. Acrophase translates rigorous academic research into scalable, field-deployable solutions that create measurable societal value.
"Partnerships with SBI Foundation and the Wadhwani Foundation have enabled Acrophase, through IIT Madras, to support able-bodied and para-athletes across India using inclusive, research-driven performance and capacity-building frameworks," IIT Madras says.
Applications have started being accepted from October 7, and the process will continue till November 16.
The applicants must be Indian citizens competing at the national level. There will be 18 scholarships for athletics, followed by swimming and shooting with 16 each.
Archery will receive 12 places, wrestling and boxing 10 each, and badminton eight.
The selection will be based on sporting merit, with preference given to players from lower-income families when candidates are otherwise equally matched.
— IANS
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