Bengaluru, 15 May

The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) on Wednesday announced that it is steering its 'Infosys Prize' into a new direction by transitioning from a mid-career prize to an early-career one, revising the upper age limit for the winners to 40 from 50.

This is being done with the objective of rewarding potential and recognising the promise of future achievement, it said. It said, winners who are not based in India will be requested to spend 30 days (in a maximum of two trips) at a host institute in India, to build networks and spark conversations with research groups here.

The categories that the Infosys Prize recognises would broadly stay the same, the ISF said. Economics, however, will now be a separate category. Previously, it was awarded under the Social Sciences category.

From 2024, the six categories that the Infosys Prize will be awarded in are: Economics, Engineering & Computer Science, Humanities & Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, and Physical Sciences.

The Infosys Prize is awarded by the ISF, a not-for-profit trust set up in 2009. The award is given annually to honour outstanding achievements of contemporary researchers and scientists in the six categories.

Each prize consists of a gold medal, a citation, and a purse of USD 100,000. The award intends to celebrate excellence in research and inspire a younger generation of scholars to take up science and research as a career, it said.

IT veterans bat for increased funding for research

Narayan Murthy and Gopalakrishnan batted for increasing funding for research and higher academic institutes by both the private and public sector. They stressed on the need for changing certain archaic things by bringing in innovative ideas in this regard.

Speaking to reporters here, Gopalakrishnan said, "Look at US universities -- MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc -- they get endowments worth billions of dollars. I hope that our alumni will contribute more to our institutions."

"Today our institutions are primarily dependent on government funding....I want to see more industry participation," he said.

Concurring with him, Murthy said there is a need to change some of the archaic things; for example even today an entrepreneur cannot donate shares to academic or research institutions. -PTI