Infosys announces winners of Infosys Prize 2012

Infosys today announced winners of Infosys Prize 2012 for outstanding research in six categories.

Ashish Lele of National Chemical Laboratories, Pune, bagged the award in the Engineering and Computer Science category while Arunava Sen (Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi) bagged the prize in the Social Sciences category.

Two researchers won in the Humanities category -- Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California) won the prize for History and Amit Chaudhuri (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) bagged the award in Contemporary Literature.

In Life Sciences, Satyajit Mayor (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore) bagged the award, while Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University won in Mathematical Sciences category.

Senior scientist Ayyappanpillai Ajayagosh (National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology) won the award for research in Physical Sciences.

The awardees will each be presented a gold medal and a prize money of Rs 50 lakh, except those in humanities, at a function in Delhi on January 3 next year.

Winners in the humanities category would receive Rs 25 lakh. Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland will felicitate the winners.

Infosys Chairman Emeritus N R Narayana Murthy and top company officials were present when the awards were announced.

Infosys Executive Co-Chairman Kris Gopalkrishnan said he was glad the Indian government was taking steps to give a thrust to education and research.

"This is a continuous process. We have to invest in all stages of education - primary, secondary and tertiary. We have to also invest in research," he told reporters.

India was increasing the number of seats in colleges, scholars, fellowships and students and Infosys has been doing likewise in education and research, Kris said.

"We recognise outstanding individuals and firmly believe they will become icons of inspiration to the next generation," he said.

Asked if India was lagging in higher education and research as many of the Indian origin prize winners were based outside the country, he said it is not necessarily so as the jury has certain criteria and are allowed to look at research by experts of Indian origin.