No one’s good enough for Infosys' Engg prize

You thought India produces one of the best engineers across the globe? Not really (seems like)! For, Indian IT giant Infosys Technologies has reportedly failed to find a worthy candidate for its Infosys Engineering Science Prize 2009.

The company has decided not to give the prize in that category to anyone this year. Infosys’ chief operating officer (COO), SD Shibulal, told a business daily that there were 34 nominees for the engineering and computer science prize but even after relaxing the age limit to 55 years, the jury could not find anyone who met all the criteria of the Infosys Prize. So, the jury has taken unanimous decision to not award the prize for the engineering sciences discipline this year.

The company has named three scientists and two academic experts as winners of Infosys Prize 2009 for outstanding contributions to scientific research.

The winner in physical sciences is Thanu Padmanabhan of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophyics, Pune, in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein’s theory of gravity in the context of thermodynamics. For mathematical sciences, Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute at Allahabad was given the prize in recognition of his contributions to mathematical physics. For life sciences, K VijayRaghavan of National Centre of Biological Sciences in Bangalore got the award.

The winner in the social sciences and economics category is Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his contributions to the economic theory of development. Upinder Singh of the University of Delhi won an award for her contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India.