Two from Bengaluru among six Infosys Prize winners

Bengaluru: The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) on Wednesday announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2023, including two from Bengaluru, in six categories.

The winners of the 2023 edition are Sachchida Nand Tripathi, Professor, Sustainable Energy Engineering, IIT-Kanpur (Engineering and Computer Science), Jahnavi Phalkey, Founding Director, Science Gallery Bengaluru (Humanities), Arun Kumar Shukla, Professor, Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, IIT-Kanpur (Life Sciences), Bhargav Bhatt, Fernholz Joint Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University (Mathematical Sciences), Mukund Thattai, Professor, Biochemistry, Biophysics and Bioinformatics, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru (Physical Sciences), and Karuna Mantena, Professor, Political Science, Columbia University (Social Sciences).

The prize for each category comprises a gold medal, a citation, and a purse of $100,000. The Infosys Prize was constituted in 2008 to honour accomplishments in scientific research and scholarship impacting India.

Prof Tripathi was awarded for deploying a large-scale, sensor-based air quality network and mobile laboratory for hyper-local measurements of pollution, data generation and AI/ML-driven analysis. The honour for Phalkey comes in recognition of her “brilliant and granular insights” into the individual, institutional, and material histories of scientific research in modern India.

Prof Shukla’s contributions to the field of G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) biology were recognised by the jury while Prof Bhatt was awarded for his contributions to arithmetic geometry and commutative algebra.

Prof Thattai’s work in evolutionary cell biology won him the honour. The jury commended Prof Mantena’s research on the theory of imperial rule and her impactful writings in political theory.

ISF president Kris Gopalakrishnan noted that the prize, over 15 years, has recognised mid-career researchers who have done impactful, groundbreaking work across disciplines. “The prize has helped drive conversations around their work and on a larger scale created meaningful engagement around science and society,” he said.

The laureates were shortlisted from 224 nominations by international juries comprising world-renowned scholars and experts. The winners were announced by ISF trustees Kris Gopalakrishnan, N R Narayana Murthy, Srinath Batni, K Dinesh, and S D Shibulal.