Cardiologist Dr. Harvinder Sahota has donated $1.5 million dollars to the Sikh Studies Department at U.C. Irvine, reports India West.

The money will be used to create a chair for the department which is expected to open in the fall of 2016.

The department will be named for Sahota’s mother, Bibi Dhan Kaur Sahota.

“My mother didn’t do anything except sit with me while I was sick,” Sahota said about the time he was an infant with double pneumonia . “She prayed and prayed. And, at one point, I stopped breathing, and everyone said I was dead. A doctor came to our home, and I began to breathe. I was alive after all.”

You can learn what the Sikh Studies Department plans to focus on and about the life of Sahota in India West.