The ninth edition of the Infosys prizes was announced on Wednesday in Bengaluru. Scientists and professionals from the research field were named by a jury which included Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, former Chief Economist Kaushik Basu and geneticist Inder Verma.
Among the winners was Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, director, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata for engineering and computer science. Her discoveries include genetic marking for breast cancer and the role of white blood cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Ananya J. Kabir, Professor of English at Kings College, London was awarded the prize for humanities.
Upinder Singh Bhalla from National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) got it for life sciences. His contribution includes research on the brain’s computational machinery. Ritabrata Munshi from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, was named for mathematical sciences, and Yamuna Krishnan, from the Department of Chemistry at University of Chicago was chosen for physical sciences for her work in the fledgling field of DNA architecture.
In the category of social sciences, Lawrence Liang, from School of Law, Ambedkar University in Delhi and the co-founder of Alternative Law Forum was named for “creative scholarship” on law and society. The prizes will be given to the six winners on January 10, 2018 in Bengaluru.
Nobel laureate Kip Thorne will felicitate the awardees with prize money worth Rs. 65 lakh each and a 22-Carat gold medallion.
The Infosys Science Foundation was formed by the trustees of the software company, Infosys, in 2009 to encourage “basic science research.”
