Indian President Pranab Mukherjee will felicitate the winners.
By Sreekanth A Nair
The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) on Monday has announced the winners of the prestigious Infosys Science Prize 2015, which includes a mix of multi-talented people, ranging from an ex-army officer to a monk.
The annual prize is given in six categories. The prize for each category consists of a purse of $1 million, a 22 karat gold medallion and a citation certificate.
The winners are: Prof Umesh Waghmare (Engineering and Computer Science), Prof. Jonardon Ganeri (Humanities), Amit Sharma (Life Sciences), Prof Mahan Maharaj (Mathematical Sciences), Prof G Ravindra Kumar (Physical Sciences), and Srinath Raghavan (Social Sciences).
The total nominations for the prize this year were 206 – 44 in engineering; 32 in humanities; 42 in life sciences; 27 in mathematical sciences; 40 in physical sciences and 20 in social sciences.
The winners 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. Khosala (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 Vardhan (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.
In the award ceremony, that will be held on February 13, 2016, in New Delhi, the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee will felicitate the winners.
Here is a brief on the winners:
Prof Umesh Waghmare is a Professor at the Theoretical Sciences Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India. He was 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.
Prof. Jonardon Ganeri, Global Network Visiting 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.
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.
Prof. Mahan Maharaj, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Belur Math, Howrah, 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.
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.
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.
S. D. Shibulal, President, Board of Trustees, Infosys Science Foundation, said in a statement, “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.”
“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,” He added.
Infosys Science Foundation, a non-profit trust, was established in 2009. It is funded by a corpus which today stands at over $20 million, and is contributed by the former Board of Directors and senior management personnel at Infosys.