The Infosys Prize is an annual award that recognizes outstanding contributions by scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists in India. By recognizing and rewarding extraordinary accomplishments, the Infosys Prize aims to elevate the prestige of pure and applied sciences research in India. The Prize hopes to fill a gap, to inspire young Indians, and to help scientists continue their good work.
2010 winners were felicitated in January 2011 by the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n Prime Minister

Prime Minister of India

The Prime Minister of India , as addressed to in the Constitution of India — Prime Minister for the Union, is the chief of government, head of the Council of Ministers and the leader of the majority party in parliament...

 Dr. Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh is the 13th and current Prime Minister of India. He is the only Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after completing a full five-year term. A Sikh, he is the first non-Hindu to occupy the office. Singh is also the 7th Prime Minister belonging to the Indian...

 at a prize ceremony in Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, and received a prize of INR 5 million, along with a pure gold medallion and a citation certificate.

Background

Research in pure and applied sciences in India, despite stellar achievements in recent times, has not been given the encouragement, support and recognition it deserves. A lacuna in support exists despite India’s rich heritage in scientific enquiry that continues to date.

However, the Government of India, with an increase in the outlay on higher education in its Eleventh Five-Year Plan, breathed change into the scientific community. In the light of this move, encouragement from other quarters might further inject vitality into scientific research in India.

Laureates for the year 2011

The winners of the Infosys Prize 2011 were announced on November 16, 2011 in each of the following five categories:

Engineering & Computer Science

Kalyanmoy Deb

Kalyanmoy deb

Kalyanmoy Deb is a professor of mechanical engineering at IIT Kanpur. His research lab is one of the premier places for evolutionary algorithms research in the world. Deb's book 'Multi-Objective Optimization using Evolutionary Algorithms' has become one of the most popular and highly cited books...

, Professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of Mechanical engineering

Mechanical engineering

Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...

 at IIT Kanpur

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur is a Central deemed University located in Uttar Pradesh, about 15 km north-west of the city of Kanpur in the Kalyanpur suburb....

 received the award for his work in the fields of evolutionary multi-objective optimization and genetic algorithms.

Life Sciences

Imran Siddiqi of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology or CCMB is a National level Research laboratory located in Hyderabad, India. CCMB is one of the constituent national laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR, the premier multidisciplinary Research & Development...

, Hyderabad

Hyderabad

-India:* Hyderabad, India, the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh* Hyderabad District, India, a district in the state of Andhra Pradesh* Hyderabad State, the pre-1956 state* Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, a village in Uttar Pradesh...

 got the prize for Life Sciences

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 in recognition of his breakthrough contributions to the understanding of formation of clonal seeds in plants, which is likely to have applications in agriculture.

Mathematical Sciences

Kannan Soundararajan

Kannan Soundararajan

Kannan Soundararajan is an Indian mathematician. He currently is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Before moving to Stanford in 2006, he was a faculty at University of Michigan where he pursued his undergraduate studies...

, Professor of Mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, was awarded the prize in Mathematical Sciences category for his "path-breaking work" on number theory

Number theory

Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...

.

Physical Sciences

Sriram Ramaswamy of the Indian Institute of Science

Indian Institute of Science

Indian Institute of Science is a research institution of higher learning located in Bangalore, India. It was established in 1909.-History:After a chance meeting between Jamsetji N...

, Bangalore

Bangalore

Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...

 won the award for Physical Sciences for his research on various aspects of the collective behaviour of living systems

Living systems

Living systems are open self-organizing living things that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter....

 ranging from bacteria

Bacteria

Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...

 to schools of fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 in the ocean

Ocean

An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...

.

Social Sciences - Economics

Prof. Raghuram Govind Rajan

Raghuram Rajan

Raghuram Govind Rajan is currently the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He is also an honorary economic adviser to Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh and the current President of the American Finance...

 from the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 got the award for his analysis of "the complex interaction between financial institutions, government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

s and people."

Social Sciences - Political Science and International Relations

Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is an Indian academic. He is currently the president of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank. The Centre for Policy Research is one of India’s most distinguished think tanks. He is also a been appointed to NYU Law School’s Global Faculty...

, President and Chief Executive of the Center for Policy Research

Centre for Policy Research (CPR)

The Centre for Policy Research is a non-profit, non-partisan and autonomous research institution and one of India's premier think tanks in public policy...

, New Delhi

New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...

 was given the award for "broadening public discussion of important social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

, political

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 and economic

Economy

An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...

 matters, bringing in heterodox

Heterodoxy

Heterodoxy is generally defined as "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". As an adjective, heterodox is commonly used to describe a subject as "characterized by departure from accepted beliefs or standards"...

 perspectives" and for constantly "challenging reigning orthodoxies

Orthodoxy

The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...

."
The award ceremony shall be held on January 9, 2012 at which the winners shall be felicitated at the hands of former Indian President

President of India

The President of India is the head of state and first citizen of India, as well as the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces. President of India is also the formal head of all the three branches of Indian Democracy - Legislature, Executive and Judiciary...

 A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

2010

Engineering & Computer Science

Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Chemical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur

Mathematical Sciences

Professor Chandrashekhar Khare

Chandrashekhar Khare

Chandrashekhar B. Khare is a professor of mathematics at the University of California Los Angeles. In 2005, he made a major advance in the field of Galois representations and number theory by proving the level 1 Serre conjecture, and later a proof of the full conjecture with Jean-Pierre Wintenberger...

, Mathematics Department, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles

Life Sciences

Dr. Chetan E. Chitnis, Principal Leader, Malaria Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Delhi

Physical Sciences

Professor Sandip Trivedi

Sandip Trivedi

Sandip Trivedi is an Indian theoretical physicist working at Tata Institute for Fundamental Research at Mumbai, India. He is well-known for his contributions to string theory, in particular finding the first models of accelerated expansion of the universe in low energy supersymmetric string...

, Theoretical Physics Department, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai

Social Sciences - Social Anthropology

Professor Nandini Sundar, Sociology Department Delhi School of Economics (DSE), Delhi

Social Sciences – Sociology

Professor Amita Baviskar, Sociology Unit, Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), Delhi

2009

Social Sciences – Economics

Professor Abhijit Banerjee

Abhijit Banerjee

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an Indian economist. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

 received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences – Economics, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the economic theory of development, and for his pioneering work in the empirical evaluation of public policy.

Abhijit Banerjee is Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.

Social Sciences – History

Professor Upinder Singh

Upinder Singh

Upinder Singh is an author and professor in the history department at the University of Delhi. She is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize in the category of Social Sciences .- Books :...

 received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences – History, in recognition of her contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval Indian history.

Upinder Singh is Professor in the Dept. of History at the University of Delhi, India.

Physical Sciences

Professor Thanu Padmanabhan

Thanu Padmanabhan

Thanu Padmanabhan is an Indian theoretical physicist. He is currently Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, at Pune, India. His principal fields of research are Cosmology and the interface between Gravity and Quantum theory...

 received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences, in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Gravity in the context of thermodynamics, and for his work on the large scale structure in cosmology.

Thanu Padmanabhan is Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India.

Mathematical Sciences

Professor Ashoke Sen

Ashoke Sen

Ashoke Sen , FRS, is an Indian theoretical physicist. He has made a number of major original contributions to the subject of string theory, including his landmark paper on strong-weak coupling duality or S-duality, which was influential in changing the course of research in the field...

 received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences, in recognition of his fundamental contributions to Mathematical Physics, in particular, to String Theory.

Ashoke Sen is Professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, India.

Life Sciences

Professor K. VijayRaghavan received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Life Sciences, in recognition of his many contributions as a developmental geneticist and neurobiologist.

K VijayRaghavan is Senior Professor in Developmental Genetics and Director of National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India.

The Infosys Prize for Mathematics 2008

The Infosys Prize for Mathematics 2008, awarded jointly by Infosys and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS)

National Institute of Advanced Studies

The National Institute of Advanced Studies , is a research institute in India.It is one of the unique institutions in the country conducting research in multidisciplinary areas....

, will be integrated with the Infosys Prize in the mathematical sciences category with effect from 2009. The first recipient of the prize was Manindra Agrawal

Manindra Agrawal

Manindra Agrawal is a professor at the department of computer science and engineering and the Dean of Resource, Planning and Generation at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is also the recipient of the first Infosys Prize for Mathematics.-Early life:Manindra Agrawal obtained a...

 of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur is a Central deemed University located in Uttar Pradesh, about 15 km north-west of the city of Kanpur in the Kalyanpur suburb....

.

Nominations

Nominations for the Infosys Prize are accepted online at the Infosys Science Foundation website http://www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Nominations for the 2011 award will open on April 1, 2011.

Trustees

• N.R. Narayana Murthy
• S. Gopalakrishnan
• K. Dinesh
  K. Dinesh
  K. Dinesh is a co-founder and was a Member of the Board of Infosys Limited until July 2011. He was the Head of Quality, Information Systems and the Communication Design Group. He was also the Chairman of Infosys Technologies Australia Pty Ltd., an Infosys subsidiary and is a trustee of the Infosys...
  
    – President of the Board of Trustees, 2010
• Shibulal S.D.
• T.V. Mohandas Pai
• Srinath Batni
• Balakrishnan V.
• Deepak Satwalekar
• Omkar Goswami

Physical Sciences

Prof. Shrinivas Kulkarni is John D. & Catherine T. McArthur Professor of Astronomy & Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

. Prof. Kulkarni's primary interests are the study of compact objects (neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts) and the search for extra-solar planets through interferometric and adaptive techniques. He serves as the Interdisciplinary Scientist for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and is co-PI of the Planet Search Key Project (also on SIM). He has been awarded the Alan T. Waterman Prize of the NSF, a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Presidential Young Investigator award from the NSF and the Helen B. Warner award of the American Astronomical Society and the Janksy Prize of Associated Universities, Inc. Kulkarni was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994), Fellow of the Royal Society of London (2001) and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2003).

Mathematical Sciences

Prof. Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan
Professor of Mathematics, Frank J. Gould Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
Prof. Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan is a winner of the Birkhoff Prize (1994), the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New York University (1995), the Leroy Steele Prize (1996) and the Abel Prize (2007). He also has honorary degrees from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (2003) and from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India (2004).

Engineering and Computer Science

Prof. Pradeep K. Khosla is currently Dean of the College of Engineering and the Philip and Marsha Dowd University Professor at Carnegie Mellon. As Dean, Prof. Khosla serves as the Chief Academic Officer and the Chief Administrative Officer for the College of Engineering. He is the recipient of several awards including the ASEE George Westinghouse Award for Education (1999), Siliconindia Leadership award for Excellence in Academics and Technology (2000), the W. Wallace McDowell award from IEEE Computer Society (2001), Cyber Education Award from the Business Software Alliance (2007), the ASME Computers in Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), and the inaugural Pan IIT American Leadership Award for Academic Excellence (2009). He was awarded the Philip and Marsha Dowd Professorship in 1998, and named University Professor in 2008. For his contributions to technology and education he has been elected as Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Fellow of American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences, and invited to participate in thought leadership forums organized by Fortune Magazine, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Milken Institute, World Economic Forum, and Blouin Foundation, amongst others. He has served and currently serves on several boards of non-profit and for-profit, and government organizations.

Life Sciences and Medicine

Prof. Inder Verma is a Professor in Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He is also an American Cancer Society Professor in Molecular Biology. One of the world's leading authorities on the development of viruses for gene therapy vectors, Dr. Verma uses genetically engineered viruses to insert new genes into cells that can then be returned to the body, where they produce the essential protein whose absence causes disease. He became the first incumbent of the Irwin Mark Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Sciences in 2009. In 2008, the Vilcek Foundation named Dr. Verma as the recipient of its prize in biomedical science. He has also been conferred the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award (1988).

Social Sciences

Prof. Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...

is Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998. His other awards include the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honor awarded by the President of India; the Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Ethics; the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award; the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Grã-Cruz); the Presidency of the Italian Republic Medal; the Eisenhower Medal; Honorary Companion of Honour (U.K.), and the George C. Marshall Award.