Edu-leaders

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam awarded six distinguished scientists with the Infosys Prize 2011. The winners are Kanpur Genetic Algorithms Laboratory director Kalyanmoy Deb in engineering and computer science, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology scientist Imran Siddiqi in life sciences, Stanford University professor Kannan Soundararajan in mathematical sciences and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) physics professor Sriram Ramaswamy in physical sciences.

University of Chicago professor Raghuram G. Rajan and Centre for Policy Research chief executive Pratap Bhanu Mehta were awarded in Social Sciences (Economics and Political Science and International Relations respectively).

Kalam honoured each of the winners with a prize money of Rs.50 lakh ($100,000), a 22-karat gold medallion and a citation expounding the Infosys laureate's work. The noted scientists were selected by the Infosys Foundation trustees and the eminent jury panels comprising Nobel laureate Amartya Sen for Social Sciences, Shrinivas Kulkarni (physical sciences), Pradeep K. Khosla (engineering and computer science), S.R. Varadhan (mathematical sciences) and Inder Verma (life sciences).

The Foundation is funded by a corpus of Rs.100 crore (Rs.10 billion), contributed by the trustees and an annual grant from the global software major. The Infosys Prize is amongst the highest in terms of money given for any award in India. (Source: igovernment)