Infosys Prize 2014 Winners’ Announcement - Address by Narayana Murthy

Good morning everyone. First of all, I'd like to announce that Dr. Vishal Sika, the CEO of Infosys, will be joining the Board of Trustees of the Infosys Science Foundation. A warm welcome to him. This year we also have something unique: we have a set of wonderful youngsters from several schools in Bangalore, as well as the teachers who have taken part in a science workshop, the Science in Sports Workshop, that is being held here today. Coming back to the activities of the Infosys Science Foundation: last year at the time of the Infosys Science Prize announcement, India's Mars Orbiter blasted off on its first interplanetary journey. Nearly a year later, the orbiter entered the Martian orbit successfully. As you all know, the whole mission is a reason for all of us to cheer for Indian science. Today we have gathered here to celebrate other heroes of science and research: the winners of the Infosys Prize 2014. Now in its sixth year, the Infosys Science Prize offers high-caliber researchers recognition for impactful contribution in their fields. This year's winners have been recognized for research in fields as diverse as poverty alleviation, green chemistry, affordable healthcare, interpretation of patent law, understanding emotion and cognition in the brain, and database design and optimization. The prize this year consists of a purse of rupees 55 lakhs, which is tax-free for those receiving it in India; a 22-karat gold medallion; and a citation certificate. Besides awarding the Infosys Prize, the Infosys Science Foundation has continued to focus on its agenda of fostering scientific thinking through public lectures, workshops, and science-oriented events for school students. We have held 12 lectures countrywide by our winners and jurors this year. The foundation also piloted a new initiative called Ganad Deepa, a training program for teachers from rural India to provide teaching frameworks conveying concepts in mathematics and science for middle school students more effectively. The pilot in Karnataka accommodated 630 teachers at an Infosys facility and lasted over 10 days. To reach a more global audience, we have also collaborated with Springer, the largest publisher of academic journals worldwide, to publish content in applied sciences, engineering, pure sciences, and mathematics under the Infosys Science Foundation series of journals, written or edited by the winners and the jury members of the Infosys Prize. During this time, the jury chairs of the Infosys Prize have also been deliberating upon the choice of the winners. We have a very distinguished set of individuals who are the chairs of the jury. Let me give a brief introduction to them. The first one, of course, is the chair of the Engineering and Computer Science Prize, Pradeep Khosla, who is the Chancellor of the University of California San Diego campus in the United States. He is the chair of the Engineering and Computer Science jury. Professor Khosla is the recipient of several awards, including the ASW George Washington Award for Education in 1999, the W. Wallace McDowell Award from the IEEE Computer Society in 2001 for his contributions to technology and education. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and has been invited to participate in thought leadership forums organized by Fortune Magazine, Advanced Mechanical Devices, the Milken Institute, the World Economic Forum, and the Blen Foundation, amongst others. He has served and currently serves on several boards of nonprofit, for-profit, and governmental agencies. The chair for the Humanities Prize is Amartya Sen. Amartya Sen, as you all know, is the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. Until 2004, he was the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He served as President of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. Amartya Sen's awards include Bharat Ratna from India, Commander of the Legion of Honor from France, the National Humanities Medal from the United States, Ordem do Mérito Científico from Brazil, Honorary Companion of Honour from the UK, Aztec Eagle from Mexico, the Edinburgh Medal from the UK, the George Marshall Award from the United States, and, of course, the Nobel Prize in Economics. The jury chair for Life Sciences is Professor Inder Verma. Inder is the American Cancer Society Professor and the first incumbent of the Irma M. and Mark R. Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Sciences in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies, United States. Dr. Verma is one of the leading authorities in the world on the development of viruses for gene therapy; he uses genetically engineered viruses to insert new genes into cells that can then be returned to the body, where they produce the essential protein whose absence causes disease. He has also been conferred the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award in 1988. Dr. Verma is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (United States), the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and a foreign associate of the Indian National Academy of Sciences. Coming to the chair of the Mathematical Sciences, we have Professor S. R. S. Varadhan, who is a Professor of Mathematics and Frank J. Good Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University in the United States. Professor Varadhan's awards include the National Medal of Science, the highest honor in the United States for a scientist, given by President Barack Obama. He is also a winner of the Abel Prize from Norway in 2007, the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 1996, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at New York University in 1995, and, of course, the well-known BÃró Priz in 1994. The chair of the Physical Sciences jury is Professor Shrinivas Kulkarni, who is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, United States. Professor Kulkarni's primary interests are the study of compact objects like neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts, and the search for extrasolar planets through interferometric and adaptive optics techniques. He has been awarded the Alan T. Waterman Prize of the National Science Foundation, a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, he was a Presidential Investigator from the NSF, and he also won the Helen B. Warner Award of the American Astronomical Society and the Jansky Prize from Associated Universities Incorporated. Professor Kulkarni was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2001, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States in 2003. The chair of the Social Sciences is Professor Kaushik Basu. Kaushik is the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, and he is also a Professor of Economics and C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University; of course he is on leave from Cornell University. Professor Basu is currently the President of the Human Development and Capability Association. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India, and was for several years a member of the steering committee of the Expert Group on Development Issues set up by the Swedish government. Professor Kaushik Basu has earlier been the Chair of the Department of Economics and Director of the Center for Analytical Economics at Cornell University. In May 2008, he was awarded one of India's highest civilian awards, Padma Bhushan, by the President of India. We are happy to share the names of the winners that these wonderful jury chairs, aided by their teams, have chosen for the Infosys Prize 2014. I congratulate all the winners of this year's prize. I invite you to congratulate the winners this year by visiting the Infosys Foundation's website and submitting a message for them, if you can. Thank you once again for joining us here today.