ISF lowers Infosys Prize age limit to 40 years, adds Economics as new category

Bengaluru: Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) has brought down the upper age limit for Infosys Prize winners to 40 years, in a redirection for the award that could help early-career researchers pursue innovation. The foundation has, since the inception of the prize, been awarding researchers aged 50 years or below.

ISF president Kris Gopalakrishnan told reporters on Wednesday that the move followed introspection – as Infosys Prize completed 15 years – on how to optimise the prize’s impact on the research ecosystem in India and encourage more students to take up careers in science.

“We want to identify researchers early on so that we can give them a longer runway to do research and hopefully, enable them to contribute more (through their research),” Gopalakrishnan said.

The foundation has created a separate category for Economics which was earlier part of the Social Sciences stream. From 2024, Infosys Prize will be awarded in six categories: Economics, Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, and Physical Sciences.

Gopalakrishnan said the winners of the prize from outside the country would be required to spend 30 days, over one or two trips, in a research institution of their choice in India. This could bring the laureates’ work to India and facilitate collaborations with researchers here, he said. ISF eyes mutually beneficial long-term partnerships from these early collaborations.

Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy said as a “progressive, thinking, and innovating organisation”, ISF was in position to steer the prize into a new direction since India was moving forward, with more institutes of higher learning. Murthy said the decision was also informed by the understanding that some of the most significant innovators in the STEM disciplines – Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, S Ramanujan, S Chandrasekhar, and John Von Neumann among them – were in their 20s and 30s when they published their breakout work.

Dr Pratima Murthy, trustee, ISF, underlined the need to nurture young talents and redirect their careers toward national and global priorities. Scientific innovation needs to be channeled to improve the lives of citizens and address environmental challenges, the NIMHANS director said.

The nomination cycle for the 2024 edition of the prize has commenced and the announcement of the winners is expected in November. ISF has, over 15 years, awarded 92 researchers across disciplines. The prize in each category consists of a gold medal, a citation, and a purse of $100,000.