Infosys Science Foundation announces winners of prestigious prize

Bengaluru: Infosys Science Foundation on Wednesday announced the prestigious Infosys Prize 2023 to six individuals for their remarkable contributions to scientific research in India.

The winners in six categories -- Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Science are:

Engineering and Computer Science: Sachchida Nand Tripathi, Professor, Sustainable Energy Engineering (SEE), IIT-Kanpur, for the deployment of large-scale sensor-based air quality network and mobile laboratory for hyper local measurements of pollution, data generation and analysis using artificial intelligence and machine learning for effective air quality management and citizens awareness.

Humanities: Jahnavi Phalkey, Founding Director, Science Gallery Bengaluru, for her brilliant and granular insights into the individual, institutional, and material histories of scientific research in modern India.

Life Sciences: Arun Kumar Shukla, Professor, Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, IIT-Kanpur, for his outstanding and far-reaching contributions to the field of G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) biology.

Mathematical Sciences: Bhargav Bhatt, Fernholz Joint Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University, for his outstanding and fundamental contributions to arithmetic geometry and commutative algebra.

Physical Sciences: Mukund Thattai, Professor, Biochemistry, Biophysics and Bioinformatics, National Centre for Biological Sciences, in recognition of his groundbreaking contributions to evolutionary cell biology.

Social Sciences: Karuna Mantena, Professor, Political Science, Columbia University for her groundbreaking research on the theory of imperial rule, and the claim that this late imperial ideology became one of the important factors in the emergence of modern social theory.

The prize for each category comprises a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000 (or its equivalent in INR). It will be presented on January 13.