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Infosys Science Foundation Announces Winners of the Infosys Prize 2015

Bangalore – November 16, 2015

The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) today announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2015 across six categories: Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. This year’s winners are an eclectic mix of people – an ex-army officer, a monk and a philosopher among others, whose work spans fields as diverse as analytical Indian Philosophy, the atomic structure of the killer malaria parasite and India’s foreign and security policies. The prize for each category consists of a purse of Rs. 65 Lakhs, a 22 karat gold medallion and a citation certificate.

The winners of the Infosys Prize 2015 were evaluated by a panel of jurors comprising of esteemed scientists and professors from around the world. The jury chairs of the six categories are: Prof. Pradeep K. Khosla (University of California San Diego) for Engineering and Computer Science; Prof. Amartya Sen (Harvard University) for Humanities; Dr. Inder Verma (Salk Institute of Biological Sciences) for Life Sciences; Prof. Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan (New York University) for Mathematical Sciences; Prof. Shrinivas Kulkarni (California Institute of Technology) for Physical Sciences; and Prof. Kaushik Basu (The World Bank) for Social Sciences.

The winners of the Infosys Prize 2015 are:

Engineering and Computer Science
Prof. Umesh Waghmare, Professor – Theoretical Sciences Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India is awarded for his innovative use of first-principles theories and modeling in insightful investigations of microscopic mechanisms responsible for specific properties of certain materials such as topological insulators, ferroelectrics, multiferroics and graphene.

Humanities
Prof. Jonardon Ganeri, Global Network Professor of Philosophy, New York University and Recurrent Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, UK is awarded for his outstanding scholarship and originality in interpreting and scrutinizing analytical Indian Philosophy and shedding light on shared ground as well as the dichotomy between Indian and Greek traditions of philosophical reasoning.

Life Sciences
Dr. Amit Sharma, Group Leader, Structural and Computational Biology Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India is awarded for his pioneering contributions towards deciphering the molecular structure, at the atomic level, of key proteins involved in the biology of pathogenesis of the deadly malarial parasite.

Mathematical Sciences
Prof. Mahan Mj, Professor of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India is awarded for his contributions to geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology and complex geometry. In particular, Prof. established a central conjecture in the Thurston program to study hyperbolic 3-manifolds and introduced important new tools to study fundamental groups of complex manifolds

Physical Sciences
Prof. G Ravindra Kumar, Professor in the Department of Nuclear and Atomic Physics (DNAP), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India is awarded for his pioneering experimental contributions to the physics of high intensity laser matter interactions. In particular for providing, for the first time, unequivocal evidence of turbulent magnetic fields and the discovery of terahertz frequency acoustic waves, in laser produced hot dense plasmas. These results have significance to testing stellar and astrophysical scenarios.

Social Sciences
Dr. Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India is awarded for outstanding research that synthesizes military history, international politics, and strategic analysis into powerful and imaginative perspectives on India in global context.

Mr. S. D. Shibulal, President, Board of Trustees, Infosys Science Foundation said, “We set up the Infosys Science Foundation and instituted the Infosys Prize to restore the romance of research. As we move into our seventh year, the Infosys Science Foundation continues to foster a culture of scientific thinking through various initiatives. We started with the Infosys Prize in 2009 and have since added high-touch, high-impact initiatives such as public lectures, training workshops for government school teachers and science oriented events for school students. Through our focused approach we aim to kindle the flame of scientific curiosity in young minds.”

He further added, “The winners of Infosys Prize 2015 were selected from several nominations received from across universities and we are grateful to our distinguished jury members to have taken the time to evaluate and award the most deserving. I hope their work will stimulate the minds of future talent, and open up a new world of possibilities for all of us.”

The Awards Ceremony for the Infosys Prize 2015 will be held on February 13, 2016, in New Delhi, where the Honorable President, Shri. Pranab Mukherjee, will felicitate the winners.

 

About the Infosys Science Foundation

The Infosys Prize is awarded under the aegis of the Infosys Science Foundation, a not-for-profit trust instituted in February 2009. The Infosys Science Foundation is funded by a corpus which today stands at over INR 130 Crore (USD 20 million), contributed by the former Board of Directors and senior management at Infosys.

For more information on the winners, please visit www.infosys-science-foundation.com.

 

About Infosys

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Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with US$ 8.7 billion in annual revenues and 187,000+ employees, is helping enterprises renew themselves while also creating new avenues to generate value.

 

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