The Infosys Prize, one of India’s top awards science and innovation, continues to be a beacon of inspiration for young minds to pursue research careers. Each year ISF announces winners across six categories: Economics, Engineering & Computer Science, Humanities & Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, and Physical Sciences. 

This year the laurates were selected by an international panel of jurors comprised of renowned scholars such as, Akeel Bilgrami, Chandrashekhar Khare, Jayathi. Y. Murthy, Kaushik Basu, Mriganka Sur, and Shrinivasan Kulkarni. At the Bangalore ceremony on November 14, Infosys founder Narayan Murthy said, 

Our hope is that this prize would be a good instrument to bring back the power of problem solving to young researchers in various areas in our country.

Laurates 2024

Arun Chandrasekhar | Economics

Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University

Arun Chandrasekhar is awarded for his work on the crucial role of informal networks in rural India, particularly in facilitating information diffusion and economic interactions. Elaborating on his process, he adds, ​“The work my collaborators and I do on communication networks focuses on the idea that the structure of the community— who talks to whom, why, and how people make inferences— greatly influences whether valuable information diffuses well.” 

This method of identifying influential individuals, which he calls the ​‘gossip protocol,’ has had a significant ground-level impact, improving policy outcomes in areas such as healthcare, education and financial inclusion. In one striking application of this method, they observed 44% increase in immunization of children in over 2000 villages in Haryana. 

Chandrasekhar hopes the award will foster stronger ties with Indian institutions and encourage policymaker partnerships to expand the use of network economics. 

Shyam Gollakota | Engineering & Computer Science

Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

Shyam Gollakota is awarded for his game-changing work on ​‘programmable sound’ that has impacted multiple diagnostic areas. His research group pioneered transforming smart devices into active sonar systems for contactless physiological sensing. The invention his group developed that excites him the most is ​‘Sound bubbles’.

“Imagine, you are at a restaurant and only want to listen to people on your table but not sounds and people elsewhere. Or, think of being in a conference room with simultaneous conversations, where a person can exclusively hear the discussion within their bubble. We’ve demonstrated for the first time how to create ​“sound bubbles” using smart headphones”, Gollakota explains. Check the real-time demo of this fascinating tech. 

Gollakota thinks this award will help commercialise this auditory augmentation technology to make it accessible to billions in the near future.

Mahmood Kooria | Humanities & Social Sciences

Lecturer, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

Historian Mahmood Kooria is awarded for his profound research on maritime Islam, exploring the intellectual and cultural histories of ​‘Shafi’i Islam’ across the Indian Ocean and its impact on the agrarian landscape of this region, from South Africa to Australia. Kooria says, ​“While much is known about European interventions, particularly in key areas such as dispute resolution, much less is known about the legal ideas and institutions that existed prior to or alongside the European ones in these regions”. 

“I was drawn to exploring these complexities by reflecting inwardly on the Muslim community in which I was raised and outwardly on the broader African and Asian communities connected by the Indian Ocean,” he adds, explaining how Islamic ideas and institutions played a role in unifying the regions of South, Southeast and West Asia. 

Siddhesh Kamat | Life Sciences

Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune

Siddhesh Kamat is awarded for his pioneering work on how bioactive lipids communicate signals in health and disease. ​“While it has been known for some time that these lipids regulate important processes in the human brain and immune system, we just discovered the biochemical and cellular basis of this and how their dysregulation causes several degenerative and autoimmune diseases,” explains Kamat. 

He feels that this prize will bring more visibility and attention to bioactive signalling lipids, like the popularity of dietary lipids such as cholesterol, and they could translate their learnings into tangible clinical studies. 

Neena Gupta | Mathematical Sciences

Professor, Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

Mathematician Neena Gupta is awarded for her extraordinary work in solving one of the world’s greatest mathematical problems, the Zariski Cancellation Problem. The problem asks whether adding a variable to two geometric objects that then become identical implies the objects were identical to begin with. 

Recalling the journey, she says her mentors, including Prof. Asanuma, had cautioned her that this project was very difficult to crack. ​“The full satisfaction of having solved a longstanding problem did not come at one stroke; it evolved over several days and through long discussions with my mentors. I cherish the memory of my talk at TIFR, where the hall was packed with leading mathematicians listening with rapt attention. The interest, enthusiasm, and encouragement shown by them at that formative stage of my career made it a memorable event, comparable to the receiving of a big award,” she adds. 

For her work, which established deeper connection in algebraic geometry and commutative algebra, Gupta also received the prestigious Ramanujan award in 2021. 

Vedika Khemani | Physical Sciences

Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Stanford University

Physicist Vedika Khemani is awarded for her contribution to understanding behaviours of complex non-equilibrium quantum systems, using advanced devices like atom, ions, and superconducting qubits. Unlike traditional physics, which looks at systems in a steady state, her research explores how these systems change over time, ​‘time crystals’, and what happens when system keeps oscillating indefinitely without heating. 

Khemani showed how these time crystals can exist in certain quantum systems, even proving it experimentally with the help of Google’s AI team. This work has opened new ways to understand how quantum systems behave in unusual, non-equilibrium situations.

In the new statuses announced this year, the winners of Infosys Prize, that do not reside in India, must spend 30 days at an Indian institute of their choice. They are also expected to give a lecture at an Indian institute within that year.