Infosys Prize


The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian Origin by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to recognize research. The prize for each category includes a gold medallion, a citation certificate, and prize money of US$100,000 . The prize purse is tax free in the hands of winners in India.
In 2008, the prize was jointly awarded by the Infosys Science Foundation and National Institute of Advanced Studies for mathematics. The following year, three additional categories were added: Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. In 2010, Engineering and Computer Science was added as a category. In 2012, a sixth category, Humanities, was added.

Laureates in Engineering and Computer Science

The Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science has been awarded annually since 2010.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2010Indian Institute of Technology Kanpurin recognition of his fundamental contributions to the fields of surfaces and interfaces, adhesion, pattern formation, nanocomposites, materials science, and hydrodynamics, which have practical applications in such areas as energy storage, filtration, micro-electro-mechanical systems and optoelectronics.
2011Indian Institute of Technology Kanpurfor his work in the fields of evolutionary multi-objective optimization and genetic algorithms.
2012National Chemical Laboratoryfor his incisive contributions in molecular tailoring of stimuli responsive smart polymeric gels; exploring the anomalous behavior of rheologically complex fluids, and for building the bridge between macromolecular dynamics and polymer processing.
2013Indian Institute of Technology Bombayfor his wide-ranging contributions to nanoscale electronics, for integrating chemistry with mechanics and electronics to invent new functional devices, and for innovation and entrepreneurship in creating technologies and products of societal value.
2014Indian Institute of Sciencefor being a pioneer in the design and optimization of database engines that form the core of modern enterprise information systems. His many contributions have found direct use in various types of databases including decision‑support, biological and multilingual databases, as well as produced software tools for query optimization and metadata processing.
2015Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Researchfor his innovative use of first- principles theories and modeling in insightful investigations of microscopic mechanisms responsible for specific properties of specific materials such as topological insulators, ferroelectrics, multiferroics and 2-dimensional materials like graphene.
2016Indian Institute of Sciencefor his seminal work in complex fluids and complex flows and especially in transition and turbulence in soft-walled tubes and channels.
2017Indian Statistical Institutefor her scholarly record in algorithmic optimization and for its significant impact on biological data analysis. Her discoveries include a genetic marker for breast cancer, determination of co-occurrence of HIV and cancers and the role of white matter in Alzheimer's disease.
2018Indian Institute of Science, Bangalorefor his work on the design of novel biosensors based on his research in biochemistry and gaseous sensors that push the performance limits of existing metal-oxide sensors. The prize recognizes his efforts to build a state-of-the-art infrastructure for research and talent training in nanoscale systems and for developing technologies for space and national security applications.
2019Sunita SarawagiIndian Institute of Technology, Bombayfor her research in databases, data mining, machine learning and natural language processing, and for important applications of these research techniques.

Laureates in Humanities

The Infosys Prize in Humanities has been awarded annually since 2012.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2012University of California, Los Angelesfor his path-breaking contribution to history. He is an outstanding scholar of early-modern South Asian history. He has been able to develop a new genre of ‘connected history,’ involving persons, products, and social and political processes stretching from Melaka in the East to Portugal in the West.
2012University of East Angliafor his imaginative and illuminating writings in literary criticism, which reflect a complex literary sensibility, and great theoretical mastery, along with a probing sense of detail. The Infosys Prize recognizes and celebrates the intellectual reach and the quiet humanity in his extraordinary writings.
2013University of Delhifor her outstanding contribution towards the integration of archaeological knowledge with the historical understanding of India from the earliest times. She is an exceptional scholar of proto-historic and early India. Her wide-ranging work on the past and present illuminates many aspects that include contemporary Indian society.
2013Jawaharlal Nehru Universityfor her exceptional contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics. Her research on syntactic relations in Hindi-Urdu has related wider debates in linguistics to the study of Indian languages and has extended our understanding of India's linguistic diversity.
2014Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access and SpicyIPfor his outstanding contributions to a broad range of legal issues and legal education. He has been doing this with remarkable fair‑mindedness in assessing opposing positions taken on quintessentially controversial areas, such as intellectual property laws.
2015New York Universityfor his outstanding scholarship and originality in interpreting and scrutinizing analytical Indian Philosophy. He has thrown light on the shared ground as well as the dichotomy between Indian and Greek traditions of philosophical reasoning, thereby illuminating both.
2016Harvard Universityfor his outstanding contributions to the history of migration, environmental history, and the history of international public health, and in recognition of his field-changing research on the interrelated past of contemporary Asia.
2017King's College Londonfor her highly original explorations of the long-standing historical elements - conceptual, social and cultural - in colonial modernity, and for her subtle and insightful ethnography of cultural and political life in Kashmir.
2018Jawaharlal Nehru Universityfor her extraordinarily illuminating study of Mughal, Rajput and Deccan art, as well as her insightful writing on the historical function and role of museums and their significance in the increasingly fraught and conflicted social world in which visual culture exists today.
2019Manu DevadevanIndian Institute of Technology, Mandifor his highly original and wide-ranging work on pre-modern South India.

Laureates in Life Sciences

The Infosys Prize in Life Sciences has been awarded annually since 2009.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2009National Centre for Biological Sciencesfor his many contributions as a developmental geneticist and neurobiologist.
2010International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnologyfor his pioneering work in understanding the interactions of the malarial parasite and its host, leading to the development of a viable malaria vaccine.
2011Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biologyfor his breakthrough contributions to the basic understanding of clonal seed formation in plants which can be applied to revolutionize agriculture, especially in the developing world.
2012National Centre for Biological Sciencesfor new insights into regulated cell surface organization and membrane dynamics, necessary for understanding self-organization and trafficking of membrane molecules in living cells, and in signaling between cells.
2013Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biologyfor his work in the field of lipid metabolism in M. tuberculosis. He discovered fatty acyl AMP ligases in tubercle bacillus, their role in the generation of the lipid components of its cell wall and of their existence in other organisms, where they play a role in biosynthesis of complex molecules.
2014Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor her significant contributions to our understanding of how the brain's structure and circuitry are formed in the embryo. Her research uncovers common genetic mechanisms that control the development of the hippocampus, cortex and amygdala.
2015International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnologyfor his pioneering contributions towards deciphering the molecular structure, at the atomic level, of key proteins involved in the biology of pathogenesis of the malarial parasite.
2016Translational Health Science and Technology Institutefor her pioneering contributions to understanding the natural history of rotavirus and other infectious diseases that are important both globally and in India. Her findings have enormous implications for vaccines and other public health measures to thwart these infections.
2017National Centre for Biological Sciencesfor his pioneering contributions to the understanding of the brain's computational machinery. His investigations have revealed essential neuronal computations that underlie the ability to acquire, integrate and store complex sensory information, and to utilize that information for decision and action.
2018Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor his pioneering work on molecular motor proteins, which are crucial for the functioning of living cells. Mallik has identified and measured forces needed to transport large particles inside cells, and demonstrated their role in fundamental processes such as targeting pathogens for their destruction and moving lipid droplets for fatty acid regulation in the liver.
2019Manjula ReddyCenter for Cellular and Molecular Biologyfor her groundbreaking discoveries concerning the structure of cell walls in bacteria.

Laureates in Mathematical Sciences

The Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences has been awarded annually since 2008.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2008Indian Institute of Technology Kanpurfor his outstanding contribution in the field of complexity theory, a branch of mathematics and computer science concerned with the study of algorithms for solving mathematical and related scientific problems, and especially their efficiency and running times.
2009Harish-Chandra Research Institutefor his fundamental contributions to Mathematical Physics, in particular, to String Theory.
2010University of California, Los Angelesfor his fundamental contributions to Number Theory, particularly his solution of the Serre conjecture.
2011Stanford Universityfor his path breaking work in analytic number theory and development of new techniques to study critical values of general zeta functions to prove the Quantum Unique Ergodicity Conjecture for classical holomorphic forms.
2012Princeton Universityfor his extraordinarily original work in algebraic number theory. His work has revolutionized the way in which various fundamental arithmetic objects, such as number fields and elliptic curves, are understood.
2013ETH Zurichfor his profound work in algebraic geometry. In particular, for his work on Gromov-Witten theory for Riemann surfaces, for predicting the connection between Gromov-Witten and Donaldson‑Thomas theories, and for his recent work with Aaron Pixton that establishes this connection for Calabi-Yau 3-folds.
2014Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Microsoft Researchfor his seminal contributions to theoretical computer science, especially in the areas of Probabilistically Checkable Proofs and error‑correcting codes.
2015Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor his outstanding contributions to geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology and complex geometry. In particular, for establishing a central conjecture in the Thurston program to study hyperbolic 3-manifolds and introducing important new tools to study fundamental groups of complex manifolds.
2016Stanford Universityfor his exceptionally wide-ranging, foundational and creative contributions to modern number theory. His unique ability to use wide-ranging techniques drawn from analytic number theory, ergodic theory, homotopy theory to address concrete problems in number theory and discover new phenomena attest to the essential unity of mathematics.
2017Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor his outstanding contributions to analytic aspects of number theory. Besides ingenious contributions to the Diophantine problem, he has established important estimates known as sub-convexity bounds for a large class of L-functions with methods that are powerful and original.
2018University of Strasbourgfor the effective use of entropy in the study of semiclassical limits of eigenstates in quantum analogs of chaotic dynamical systems and for her work on the delocalization of eigenfunctions on large regular graphs.
2019Siddhartha Mishrafor his outstanding contributions to Applied Mathematics, in particular for designing computational methods that solve non-linear partial differential equations arising in different areas, analyzing their effectiveness and designing algorithms to implement them.

Laureates in Physical Sciences

The Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences has been awarded annually since 2009.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2009Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysicsfor his contribution to a deeper understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity in the context of thermodynamics, and for his work on the large scale structure in cosmology.
2010Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor finding an ingenious way to solve two of the most outstanding puzzles of Superstring Theory simultaneously: What is the origin of dark energy of the Universe? Why is there no massless scalar particle?
2011Indian Institute of Sciencefor his research on various aspects of the collective behaviour of living systems ranging from bacteria to schools of fish in the ocean.
2012National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technologyfor his pioneering development of methods for the construction of supramolecular functional materials, which can be employed as components in organic electronic devices and in powerful substance selective optical sensing and imaging.
2013Institute for Advanced Study and Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor his pioneering contributions to the study of string theory, quantum field theory and gravity, and for uncovering a deep connection between the equations of fluid and superfluid dynamics and Einstein's equations of general relativity.
2014Indian Institute of Chemical Technologyfor his diverse and notable contributions in synthetic organic chemistry with special focus on the synthesis of complex molecules from natural sources. He has devised innovative, practical approaches to pharmaceuticals of current interest to industry.
2015Tata Institute of Fundamental Researchfor 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.
2016Physical Research LaboratoryHis experiments on Chandrayaan-1 and Mars Orbiter missions revealed new features of solar wind interactions with lunar surface and provided important clues for understanding thermal escape of the Martian atmosphere. He also made very significant contributions in detection and delineation of the nature and origin of planetary X-rays.
2017University of Chicagofor her ground-breaking work in the emerging field of architecture of the building blocks of life—the DNA. By successfully manipulating DNA to create biocompatible nanomachines she has created novel ways of interrogating living systems, increasing our knowledge of cell function and getting one step closer to answering unresolved biomedical questions.
2018Indian Institute of Sciencefor Climate Change for his pioneering scientific work in the field of climate change. His studies on black carbon aerosols, the dark, light absorbing, microscopic particles in air which greatly influence the energy balance of the atmosphere over the Indian subcontinent, have enabled a better understanding of the role of these particles on climate change, precipitation, and, human health in the Indian subcontinent.
2019Govindasamy MugeshIndian Institute of Sciencefor his seminal work in the chemical synthesis of small molecules and nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

Laureates in Social Sciences

The Infosys Prize in Social Sciences has been awarded annually since 2009.
YearLaureateInstitutionCitation
2009Massachusetts Institute of Technologyfor his contributions to the economic theory of development, and for his pioneering work in the empirical evaluation of public policy.
2009University of Delhifor her contributions as a historian of ancient and early medieval Indian history.
2010Delhi School of Economicsin recognition of her contributions as an outstanding analyst of social identities, including tribe and caste, and the politics of knowledge in modern India.
2010Institute of Economic Growthin recognition of her contributions as an outstanding analyst of social and environmental movements in modern India.
2011University of Chicagofor his analysis of the complex interaction between financial institutions, governments and people.
2011Center for Policy Researchfor broadening public discussion of important social, political and economic matters, bringing in heterodox perspectives and for constantly challenging reigning orthodoxies.
2012Indian Statistical Institutefor his game-theoretic analyses of mechanism design for implementing social choice rules, when individuals have diverse information and incentives.
2013Nehru Memorial Museum & Libraryfor her distinctive and pioneering research that spans a remarkable range covering four main areas: Agrarian society at the intersection of economy, culture and environment; school education in varied regional contexts; globalization and its impact on the moral economy of urban occupations; and social science as seen from the vantage point of Indian languages and regional cultures.
2014Massachusetts Institute of Technologyin recognition of her pioneering and prodigious contributions to development economics, with important implications for policies pertaining to the delivery of services to the poor.
2015Center for Policy Researchfor outstanding research that synthesizes military history, international politics, and strategic analysis into powerful and imaginative perspectives on India in global context.
2016University of Cambridgein recognition of his remarkably deep analysis of the multifaceted role of communities, such as ethnic groups and castes, in the process of economic development.
2017Ambedkar Universityfor his creative scholarship on law and society. His prodigious output in the fields of copyright law, digital technologies and media, and popular culture consistently raises probing questions about the nature of freedom, rights, and social development. His provocative answers link historical context and ethical practice in unexpected and illuminating ways.
2018The University of Chicago Booth School of Businessfor his path-breaking work in behavioral economics. Mullainathan's research has had substantial impact on diverse fields such as development, public finance, corporate governance and policy design. A significant part of this work is relevant to India. He is currently working on big data and machine learning issues and applications in economics.
2019Anand PandianJohns Hopkins Universityfor his brilliantly imaginative work on ethics, selfhood and the creative process.

Trustees

, a professor of law awarded the Infosys Prize, was found guilty by an internal university inquiry committee of sexually harassing a doctoral student on multiple occasions. Following the adverse finding, prominent activists, academicians and gender rights groups issued a public statement on social media condemning Liang and criticising the award of the Infosys Prize to Liang.