BANGALORE, INDIA: Five categories. Six outstanding achievements. It was rewarding time for the untiring and sustained efforts of researchers on Wednesday, when Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2011.
At the third edition of the event, which marked the return of T.V. Mohandas Pai in the limelight, six were the chosen ones from about 200 nominations for Engineering and Computer Science, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. Social Sciences was divided into two categories — Economics, and Political Science and International Relations.
As the president of the Board of Trustees of ISF, Pai, said, "It is an extraordinary testament of talent and outstanding achievements. We were pleasantly surprised to see the increased enthusiasm among researchers (to nominate their projects)."
In the Engineering and Computer Sciences category, Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb was awarded the prize for his contributions to the Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization and in Life Sciences, it was Dr Imran Siddiqi for his breakthrough contributions to the basic understanding of clonal seed formation in plants, which can be applied to revolutionize agriculture, especially in the developing world.
Prof. Kannan Soundararajan from Stanford University was awarded the prize for Mathematical Sciences in recognition to his work on analytic number theory.
It was Prof. Sriram Rajagopal Ramaswamy from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, who walked away with the honours in Physical Sciences for his pioneering work in the field of active matter.
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The Economics award will be conferred on Prof. Raghuram Govind Rajan, economic advisor to the Prime Minister, for his work on financial development to economic growth, whereas Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta bagged the Political Science award for his contribution to political philosophy and social theory.
"The order of preference to award the nominations is for the researcher to be an Indian resident working in the country, a person of Indian origin with work influenzing India and rest of the world, and anyone whose work with a positive impact on India. So far, we have got people from the first two categories," said chairman emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy.
In this edition, all six will receive the awards from eminent space scientist and former President of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at a ceremony on January 9, 2012. A citation, a 22-carat gold medallion, and Rs. 50 lakh in cash would be awarded to them.
On whether the prize categories would be increased, Murthy said that they were open based on the returns the company gets from its corpus.
At present, the age limit for researchers to qualify for the award is between 40 and 50, the upper limit of which might be relaxed by five years. "We are not getting enough younger researchers from India. We feel, certainly, the younger the better," commented Pai.
The jury chairs for the five disciplines are Nobel laureate Prof. Amartya Sen (Social Sciences), Prof. Shrinivas Kulkarni (Physical Sciences), Prof. Pradeep K. Khosla (Engineering and Computer Science), Prof. S.R. Varadhan for Mathematical Sciences and Prof. Inder Verma (Life Sciences).