Bengaluru, Nov 15 (IANS) Five eminent professors and a director were selected for the Infosys Prize 2017, said the software major’s Science Foundation on Wednesday.

“A six-member jury of renowned scientists and professors selected the winners from 236 nominations received in six categories,” Foundation’s Board of Trustees President and Infosys co-founder K. Dinesh told reporters here.

The winners are Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Director, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in Engineering and Computer Science; Upinder Singh Bhalla, Professor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, in Life Sciences; Ritabrata Munshi, Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, in Mathematical Sciences.

In Physical Sciences, the winner is Yamuna Krishnan, Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago; Lawrence Liang, Professor, School of Law, Ambedkar University, New Delhi, won it in Social Sciences, and Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature, King’s College London, in Humanities.

“The Infosys Prize continues to honour and recognise some of the best researchers and scientists of our time. Among the winners are a neuroscientist using computers to map the human brain, a computer scientist studying biological systems and a chemist trying to make DNA machines to study living cells,” said Dinesh.

The prize for each category consists of a purse of Rs 65 lakh, a 22-karat gold medallion and a citation certificate.

The jury members are Pradeep K. Khosla, University of California, San Diego; Amartya Sen, Harvard University; Inder Verma, Salk Institute of Biological Sciences; Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, New York University; Shrinivas Kulkarni, California Institute of Technology and Kaushik Basu, Cornell University.

“The award aligns with our principle of promoting science and inspiring young researchers across the country. The Infosys Prize is gaining recognition and has become one of the coveted prize awards in science and research in the country,” said Dinesh.

The awards ceremony will be held on January 10 in Bengaluru. Nobel laureate Kip S. Thorne, Professor Emeritus at California Institute of Technology, will felicitate the winners.

Thorne, a theoretical physicist, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017 for his contribution to the observation of gravitational waves in 2015, posited by Albert Einstein a century ago.

Set up in 2009 as a not-for-profit organisation by Infosys co-founders N.R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S. Gopalakrishnan, S.D. Shibulal and Dinesh, the Foundation promotes interest in science and research in the country.

–IANS
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