The Infosys Prize is an annual award granted to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards for research in India. The prize for each category includes a gold medallion, a citation certificate, and prize money of US$100,000 (or equivalent in Indian Rupees). The prize purse is tax free for winners living in India. The winners are selected by the jury of their respective categories, headed by the jury chairs.
In 2008, the prize was jointly awarded by the Infosys Science Foundation and National Institute of Advanced Studies for mathematics. The following year, three additional categories were added: Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. In 2010, Engineering and Computer Science was added as a category. In 2012, a sixth category, Humanities, was added.
Laureates in Engineering and Computer Science The Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science has been awarded annually since 2010.
Year Laureate(s) Institution(s) Citation 2010 Indian Institute of Technology KanpurAwarded "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the fields of surfaces and interfaces, adhesion, pattern formation, nanocomposites, materials science, and hydrodynamics, which have practical applications in such areas as energy storage, filtration, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and optoelectronics." 2011 Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Awarded "for his work in the fields of evolutionary multi-objective optimization and genetic algorithms." 2012 National Chemical LaboratoryAwarded "for his incisive contributions in molecular tailoring of stimuli responsive smart polymeric gels; exploring the anomalous behavior of rheologically complex fluids, and for building the bridge between macromolecular dynamics and polymer processing." 2013 Indian Institute of Technology BombayAwarded "for his wide-ranging contributions to nanoscale electronics, for integrating chemistry with mechanics and electronics to invent new functional devices, and for innovation and entrepreneurship in creating technologies and products of societal value." 2014 Indian Institute of ScienceAwarded "for being a pioneer in the design and optimization of database engines that form the core of modern enterprise information systems. His many contributions have found direct use in various types of databases including decision‑support, biological and multilingual databases, as well as produced software tools for query optimization and metadata processing." 2015 Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific ResearchAwarded "for his innovative use of first- principles theories and modeling in insightful investigations of microscopic mechanisms responsible for specific properties of specific materials such as topological insulators, ferroelectrics, multiferroics and 2-dimensional materials like graphene." 2016 Indian Institute of ScienceAwarded "for his seminal work in complex fluids and complex flows and especially in transition and turbulence in soft-walled tubes and channels." 2017 Indian Statistical Institute Awarded "for her scholarly record in algorithmic optimization and for its significant impact on biological data analysis. Her discoveries include a genetic marker for breast cancer, determination of co-occurrence of HIV and cancers and the role of white matter in Alzheimer's disease." 2018 Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Awarded "for his work on the design of novel biosensors based on his research in biochemistry and gaseous sensors that push the performance limits of existing metal-oxide sensors. The prize recognizes his efforts to build a state-of-the-art infrastructure for research and talent training in nanoscale systems and for developing technologies for space and national security applications." 2019Sunita SarawagiIndian Institute of Technology, BombayAwarded "for her research in databases, data mining, machine learning and natural language processing, and for important applications of these research techniques." 2020Hari BalakrishnanMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyAwarded "for his broad contributions to computer networking, his seminal work on mobile and wireless systems." 2021Chandrasekhar Nair Molbio DiagnosticsAwarded for "his development and large-scale commercialization of Truenat, a new point-of-care testing platform for PCR-based medical diagnostics. Dr. Nair’s work has enabled testing for millions of COVID-19 cases across resource-limited settings in India and the diagnosis of multiple infectious diseases including tuberculosis all over the world."2022Suman Chakraborty Indian Institute of Technology KharagpurAwarded for "his pioneering work in elucidating the interaction of fluid mechanics, interfacial phenomena, and electromechanics at the micro- and nanoscale. Using this understanding he has helped to advance healthcare in resource-limited settings through the invention of novel low-cost medical devices for sensing, diagnostics and therapeutics."2023Sachchida Nand Tripathi Indian Institute of Technology KanpurAwarded "for the deployment of large-scale sensor-based air quality network and mobile laboratory for hyper local measurements of pollution, data generation and analysis using AI+ML for effective air quality management and citizen awareness, and for the discovery of new pathways of aerosols formation and growth that provide mechanistic understanding of haze formation."2024Shyam Gollakota University of WashingtonAwarded "for his impactful research and technology translation spanning multiple engineering domains in societally relevant areas such as smart-phone based affordable healthcare tools for low- and middle-income countries, battery-free computing and communication, and augmentation of human auditory sensing with artificial intelligence."2025Sushant Sachdeva University of TorontoAwarded "for his deep insights into mathematical optimization and the resolution of longstanding open questions in algorithmic theory that has established new standards on achievable performance in computational problems affecting information flows across societal lifelines, including the internet, transportation, and communication networks. He is a pioneer in theoretical computer science whose fundamental contributions have profoundly impacted many algorithmic challenges underlying modern society."Laureates 2025
Laureates in Humanities The Infosys Prize in Humanities has been awarded annually since 2012.
Year Laureate(s) Institution(s) Citation 2012 University of California, Los Angeles Awarded "for his path-breaking contribution to history. He is an outstanding scholar of early-modern (1500-1800) South Asian history. He has been able to develop a new genre of 'connected history,’ involving persons, products, and social and political processes stretching from Melaka in the East to Portugal in the West." University of East Anglia Awarded "for his imaginative and illuminating writings in literary criticism, which reflect a complex literary sensibility, and great theoretical mastery, along with a probing sense of detail. The Infosys Prize recognizes and celebrates the intellectual reach and the quiet humanity in his extraordinary writings." 2013 University of Delhi Awarded "for her outstanding contribution towards the integration of archaeological knowledge with the historical understanding of India from the earliest times. She is an exceptional scholar of proto-historic and early India. Her wide-ranging work on the past and present illuminates many aspects that include contemporary Indian society." Jawaharlal Nehru University Awarded "for her exceptional contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics. Her research on syntactic relations in Hindi-Urdu has related wider debates in linguistics to the study of Indian languages and has extended our understanding of India's linguistic diversity." 2014 Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access and SpicyIP Awarded "for his outstanding contributions to a broad range of legal issues and legal education. He has been doing this with remarkable fair‑mindedness in assessing opposing positions taken on quintessentially controversial areas, such as intellectual property laws." 2015 New York University Awarded "for his outstanding scholarship and originality in interpreting and scrutinizing analytical Indian Philosophy. He has thrown light on the shared ground as well as the dichotomy between Indian and Greek traditions of philosophical reasoning, thereby illuminating both." 2016 Harvard University Awarded "for his outstanding contributions to the history of migration, environmental history, and the history of international public health, and in recognition of his field-changing research on the interrelated past of contemporary Asia." 2017 King's College London Awarded "for her highly original explorations of the long-standing historical elements - conceptual, social and cultural - in colonial modernity, and for her subtle and insightful ethnography of cultural and political life in Kashmir." 2018 Jawaharlal Nehru University Awarded "for her extraordinarily illuminating study of Mughal, Rajput and Deccan art, as well as her insightful writing on the historical function and role of museums and their significance in the increasingly fraught and conflicted social world in which visual culture exists today." 2019Manu DevadevanIndian Institute of Technology, MandiAwarded "for his highly original and wide-ranging work on pre-modern South India." 2020Prachi DeshpandeCenter for Studies in Social SciencesAwarded "for her extraordinarily nuanced and highly sophisticated treatment of South Asian historiography." 2021Ângela Barreto XavierUniversity of Lisbon, PortugalAwarded for "her deeply researched and sophisticated analysis of conversion and violence in the Portuguese empire in India, especially Goa.Her extensive body of writings in both English and Portuguese have shown Xavier to be an important and original voice on colonial and imperial history."2022 National Law School of India University Awarded for "his insightful understanding of the Indian Constitution, especially his carefully argued account of the importance of the landmark ‘basic structure doctrine’ adopted by the Supreme Court in 1973 that guides and constrains various efforts to amend it, while also ensuring its stability in the face of executive and legislative outcomes in India’s political life.2023 Science Gallery Bengaluru Awarded for "her brilliant and granular insights into the individual, institutional, and material histories of scientific research in modern India.2024 Mahmood Kooria University of Edinburgh, UK Awarded for "his truly outstanding and seminal contributions to the study of maritime Islam in a global perspective...".2025 Andrew Ollett University of Chicago Ollett is the world’s foremost scholar of the Prakrit languages in this generation. His book, Language of the Snakes, is a magisterial analysis of the cultural roles of Prakrit in tandem with Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars over the last two thousand years. Andrew Ollett’s linguistic mastery and knowledge is breathtaking, ranging from detailed contributions to the study of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Kannada, Tamil, Old Javanese, and Chinese, in addition to his knowledge of the modern European languages and his training in Greek and Latin.Laureates 2025
Laureates in Life Sciences The Infosys Prize in Life Sciences has been awarded annually since 2009.