The Infosys Science Foundation awarded the winners of Infosys
Prize 2011, in recognition of their outstanding achievements and
contributions to the field of scientific research. The guest of
honour, former President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, felicitated
the six laureates across five categories - Engineering and Computer
Science, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences
and Social Sciences at a ceremony in Bangalore. The prize in each
category comprises a 22-karat gold medallion, a citation expounding
the laureate’s work and Rs 50 lakh as prize money.
Expanding the scope of the awards with the aim to recognize
research work being undertaken in other fields, the Infosys Science
Foundation also announced the introduction of a sixth category for
the Infosys Prize 2012. The new category – Humanities will
cover philosophy, history, archaeology, linguistics and literary
studies. The Social Sciences category will continue to include
economics, political science, international relations,
anthropology, sociology and psychology.
The six winners of this year, which were drawn from a total of over
240 nominations, are as follows:
- Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb for the category of Engineering and
Computer Science
- Dr Imran Siddiqi for the Life Sciences category
- Prof. Kannan Soundararajan for the Mathematical Sciences
category
- Prof. Sriram Ramaswamy for the Physical Sciences category
- Prof. Raghuram G. Rajan for the Social Sciences (Economics)
category
- Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta, for the Social Sciences (Political
Science and International Relations) category
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, 11th President of India said, “We all
live in a knowledge-based era and a nation’s strength is
truly judged by the quality of collective knowledge. It is
extremely important to recognize and encourage productive academic
pursuits. Such initiatives will certainly boost the confidence of
researchers in physical, biological and social sciences and related
fields.”
The Infosys Science Foundation is funded by a corpus, which
today stands at Rs 100 crore, contributed by the trustees of the
Infosys Science Foundation and Infosys
Limited.
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