Infosys Prize 2024: Six Scholars, Including Two Women, Win Prestigious Award
Bengaluru, November 14, 2024 - The Infosys Science Foundation has announced the winners of its prestigious Infosys Prize 2024, recognizing outstanding contributions in six fields of science.
Six academicians and researchers have been awarded the prize this year, including two women scientists who have made significant breakthroughs in their respective fields.
Neena Gupta, Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, has won the Mathematical Sciences Prize for her work on the Zariski Cancellation Problem, a fundamental problem in algebraic geometry. The problem was first posed by Oscar Zariski in 1949 and Gupta has proved a striking result that Asanuma’s three-dimensional affine variety yields a negative answer to Zariski's original Cancellation Problem in positive characteristic.
On the other hand, Vedika Khemani, Associate Professor at Stanford University, has won the Physical Sciences Prize for her pioneering contributions to theoretical and experimental non-equilibrium quantum matter. Her most notable contribution is the discovery of time-crystals, a phenomenon that has opened up new avenues in the study of quantum systems.
Other winners include Arun Chandrasekhar from Stanford University who has won the Economics Prize for his work on social and economic networks using innovative data sets and theoretical methods from machine learning and computer science. Shyam Gollakota, Professor at the University of Washington, has won the Engineering and Computer Science Prize for his research in smartphone-based affordable healthcare tools, battery-free computing, and augmentation of human auditory sensing with artificial intelligence.
The Infosys Prize 2024 in Humanities and Social Sciences goes to Mahmood Kooria from the University of Edinburgh, who has made seminal contributions to the study of maritime Islam from a global perspective. Siddhesh Kamat from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, has won the Life Sciences Prize for his discoveries concerning bioactive lipids, their receptors, and their metabolic and signalling pathways.
The Infosys Prize is presented in partnership with the Infosys Foundation which was instituted by Narayana Murthy in 2009. Each winner receives a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000 (or its equivalent in INR). The award has been instrumental in recognizing talented researchers whose contributions are shaping the future of science.
The ceremony to announce the winners was held at the Infosys Science Foundation's office in Bengaluru. Narayana Murthy was also present for the occasion. Previous laureates of the Infosys Prize have received prestigious international awards, including the Nobel Prize and the Fields medal.