Six chosen for Infosys Prize

Kalam to present the awards in January

(Front row, from left) S.D. Shibulal, CEO Infosys; N.R. Narayana Murthy,Chairman Emeritus, Infosys Limited and Trustee of Infosys ScienceFoundation; T. V. Mohandas Pai, President of the Board of Trustees, InfosysScience Foundation; (second row, from right) S. Gopalakrishnan, ExecutiveCo-Chairman, Infosys; K. Dinesh and V. Balakrishnan, Member of the Boardand CFO, Infosys at a press conference to announce the winners of the InfosysScience Foundation 2011 Prize in Bangalore on Wednesday. Photo: G.R.N. Somashekar

The Infosys Science Foundation, promoted by IT services major Infosys Ltd., announced the winners of prizes in five categories for 2011 on Wednesday.

Kalyanmoy Deb, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, won the prize for Engineering and Computer Sciences for his work in the emerging field of Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation and Genetic Algorithms, which have been applied in industries such as logistics and refineries.

The prize for Life Sciences was awarded to Imran Siddiqi, Scientist at the Centre for Cellular Biology, Hyderabad, for “breakthrough contributions to the understanding of clonal seed formation in plants.” His research on apomixes (asexual reproduction) in plants could revolutionise agriculture for poor farmers in developing countries, it stated.

Kannan Soundararajan, Director of the Mathematical Research Centre at Stanford University, won the prize for Mathematical Sciences for his “path-breaking work” on number theory.

Sriram Ramaswamy, Professor of Physics at the Centre for Condensed Matter Theory, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, won the prize for research on various aspects of the collective behaviour of living systems ranging from bacteria to schools of fish in the ocean.

Raghuram G. Rajan, Professor at the University of Chicago, won one of the two prizes awarded for the Social Sciences, for his work analysis of the “complex interaction between financial institutions, governments and people”.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy research, New Delhi, won the other prize awarded for the Social Sciences (Political Science and International Relations).

The Infosys Prize was instituted in 2009. Winners of the prize will be given a gold medal, a citation certificate and prize money of Rs. 50 lakh.

The former president, A.P.J. Kalam, will present the medals at an award ceremony, which is scheduled to be held on January 9, 2012.

N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus, Infosys, said the prize reflected the company's commitment to encourage young Indian scientists and “to attract young minds to science”.