Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on Monday gave away the Infosys Science Foundation prizes, India’s equivalent of the Nobel prizes, to six world-leading researchers in the categories of Engineering and Computer Science, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. The six winners for 2011 were drawn from over 240 nominations. The Infosys Prize, instituted in 2009 to recognise outstanding work in basic, applied and social sciences, comprises a 22-karat gold medallion, a citation and Rs 50 lakh in prize money.
The foundation has created a Rs 100 crore campus to award these prizes, all of it contributed by Infosys founders and the company. Manipal Education chairman T.V. Mohandas Pai, who was president of the foundation’s board of trustees for 2011, announced that it would add a Humanities prize, starting next year, to recognise contributions to research in Philosophy, History, Archa-eology, Linguistics and Literary Studies.
“Building infrastructure to encourage higher education and research is crucial for the development of the country,” said Infosys founder and chairman emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy. “It is important that we make young people in India feel that research is recognised and appreciated. The Infosys Prize is an attempt in this regard,” said Nobel laureate Prof. Amartya Sen, who is also the jury chair for the Social Sciences category of Infosys Prize.
Kalyanmoy Deb
Prof. Deb of IIT-Kanpur is a world leader in Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimisation. Mimicking the principles of natural evolution, his algorithms derive a range of trade-offs between multiple goals — such as between cost, battery life, screen size and durability of a smartphone — that companies try to meet while designing products.
Imran Siddiqui
If Dr. Imran Siddiqui of CCMB, Hyderabad, succeeds in taking his work on clonal seed formation to the agricultural field, it will help accelerate food production in a way that’s consistent with natural evolution, while avoiding the controversies that surround genetically modified organisms produced by the big seed corporations.
Kannan Soundararajan
Stanford University’s Prof. Kannan Soundararajan’s work in esoteric number theory has provided tools for the study of equally esoteric phenomenon in quantum chaos, especially something called Quantum Ergodicity, mathematically formalising a conjecture made 15 years ago by his PhD guide Peter Sarnak.
Sriram Ramaswamy
The works of Prof. Sriram Rajagopal Ramaswamy of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, in the field of active matter explains the natural symmetry that characterises the collective behaviour of living systems such as a flock of birds or a school of fish. His resear-ch interests include statistical mechanics and dynamics of biological matter.
Raghuram Rajan
The work of Professor Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business analysed the contribution of financial development in economies to growth. Through his research, he is credited with having predicted the possibility of a global financial crisis well before it actually happened in 2008.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
CPR’s Pratap Bhanu Mehta combines contributions to political philosophy and social theory with insightful analysis of India’s politics and public policy. His theoretical work engages with the normative foundations of democracy and justice. His public writings show up the gap between “representative” and “responsive” democracy.
