New Delhi: In a first, all six winners of the prestigious Infosys Prize 2024, announced Thursday, were under 40 years of age, in line with the Infosys Science Foundation’s new statute to begin awarding only early career researchers.
From contributions to the subject of quantum matter and ‘time crystals’ to pioneering research into maritime Islamic laws and culture, this year’s winners are from six top universities, including the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER)-Pune and the Indian Statistical Institute.
“In order to reiterate our commitment to seek out extraordinary talent, we want to seek out brilliance and ability early on,” said the president of Infosys Science Foundation, Kris Gopalakrishnan, in the announcement ceremony. “We believe that this redirection will help serve as a catalyst for future redirection, and help the young scientists of tomorrow.”
This year, Economics was a separate award category, while the Humanities prize was combined with Social Sciences.
The 2024 winners are Vedika Khemani (Stanford University) for Physical Sciences, Siddhesh Kamat (IISER-Pune) in the field of Life Sciences, Arun Chandrasekhar (Stanford University) for Economics, Mahmood Kooria (University of Edinburgh) for Humanities and Social Sciences, Neena Gupta (Indian Statistical Institute) for Mathematical Sciences, and Shyam Gollakota (University of Washington) for Engineering and Computer Science.
They will be felicitated at the annual awards ceremony, which is held in January every year. The prize comes with a gold medal, a citation and a tax-free award of $100,000 (currently around Rs 70 lakh) every year.
At the announcement ceremony, board members Mohandas Pai and Narayana Murthy made remote statements.
Murthy opened his remarks with an admiration for Israel and how its leaders transformed the country that was “lacking in natural resources” through creativity and innovation, quoting the ninth prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres. He said that historic STEM ideas from the Vedic times were stifled during invasions by tribal leaders from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, until the British came to spur it along slowly.
“The Indian youth was held back in its adventures in science, mathematics, engineering and medicine, power of observation of nature, curiosity, inferencing, critical and analytical thinking, invention and innovation, and problem definition and problem solving, between 1000 AD and 1947 AD—a period of about one thousand years.”
He added that the country has now “started to create an environment for young researchers to bring fame to the nation”.
The ceremony saw recorded statements from winners, nearly identically professing shock and surprise at their win, and appreciation for support.
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Physical Sciences: Time crystals
The 2024 Infosys Physical Sciences Prize has been awarded to Vedika Khemani, theoretical physicist and assistant professor at Stanford University. She has been recognised for her “groundbreaking and wide-ranging” contributions to quantum matter, and the discovery of time crystals.
With the rapid advent of quantum computing, there also has been an accompaniment of rapid development in the quantum physics world to enable the technology. This new subfield of physics deals with quantum entities at a sub atomic scale. Khemani’s work is focused on fundamental questions about quantum systems, thermodynamic equilibrium, hydrodynamics and more.
Khemani has collaborated with several international teams, including the Google Quantum AI team. Her breakthrough findings include the Hilbert Space Fragmentation (a division of quantum phases) and time crystals, which explore whether a quantum system can break time, and stay in time translation symmetry and time-dependent oscillations the way a pendulum clock breaks space oscillation.
She has previously been a Sloan Fellow and a Packard Fellow, and has also won the 2022 Breakthrough New Horizons Prize.
Life Sciences: Bioactive fats
The Life Sciences Prize has been awarded to Dr Siddhesh Kamat for his discoveries on the metabolic and signalling pathways, and behaviours of bioactive lipids and their receptors. Kamat’s work aims to understand what role lipids or fats—a key component of a biological cell—play in cellular functions and human diseases.
His work identified that a certain enzyme mutation of the molecule, called lyso-PS, results in neurodegenerative disease.
Kamat is an associate professor of Biology at IISER-Pune, and has previously been the recipient of the Swarnajayanti DST fellowship and the Merck Young Scientist award in Biological Sciences. He also serves as the Chairperson of the National Facility for Gene Function in Health and Disease.
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Economics: Social networks
The Economics Prize has been awarded to Arun Chandrasekhar, professor of Economics at Stanford University, for his work in the study of economic and social networks. He also used innovative data sets and created theoretical models for machine learning and computer science. He has notably worked with data from multiple Karnataka villages and his work is described as a “testbed” for studying important questions in Development Economics.
Chandrashekhar is renowned for his work in social networks globally, and his work draws from that being done in Computer Science and Statistics to model and understand Economics.
Humanities and Social Sciences: Maritime Islam through ages
Mahmood Kooria, lecturer of History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh, has won the 2024 Infosys Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been recognised for his pioneering research into maritime Islamic laws and culture, and the role they played in shaping economic, political and cultural transformation in the Indian Ocean region.
His research delves into previously unexplored historic records of pre-modern and modern Islamic laws, particularly that of Shafi’i law, around the Malabar coast region of Kerala.
His work highlights the rich corpus and documentations of history pertaining to legal, literary and historic texts in Arabic and Malayalam. It also connects the impact of these laws and culture through the regions of East Africa, Middle East and South East Asia.
Kooria is one of the youngest winners of the prize and the author of multiple books in his field, including the series “Malabar in the Indian Ocean”, and Islamic Law in “Circulation: Shafi‘i Texts Across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean” (2022).
Mathematical Sciences: Algebraic geometry
The Mathematical Sciences prize has been awarded to Neena Gupta of ISI-Kolkata for her work on the Zariski Cancellation Problem—a fundamental problem in algebraic geometry that was first posed in 1949. Gupta provided a three-dimensional answer to the problem in 2014.
Her solution provides a negative answer to a fundamental question in mathematical structure: ‘If two geometric objects have the same structure after adding a dimension to them, are they identical?’ In follow-up work, her research offers more interconnectedness to other parts of algebraic geometry.
Gupta has previously been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize as the youngest recipient in the Mathematics category. She was also awarded the DST Ramanujam prize in 2021.
Computer Science and Engineering: Mobile systems integration
Shyam Gollakota, professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, is the winner in the Computer Science and Engineering category. His work deals with translation technology across multiple domains and also the augmentation of artificial intelligence in auditory processing on mobile phones.
He has also played a role in developing smartphone-based mobile healthcare apps for low and middle-income countries. He has worked on battery-free wireless communications, physiological sensors to be used with smart phones for healthcare, and transforming smart sonar devices into active wireless sensors.
His work has enabled the use of battery-free devices, such as cell phones, cameras, under-water Wi-Fi and powerline networks. He is also credited with creating completely new research directions in mobile and wireless communication.
On why ISF has begun to reward early career researchers, Gopalakrishnan, president of the board of trustees told ThePrint that the age limit of 40 was decided as a ten-year period from average completion of PhD.
“We feel that with this recognition and visibility, younger researchers get a much longer runway to do even more impactful work. These are brilliant people, and hopefully with this encouragement and visibility, they will do even more impactful work.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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