Infosys award for TrueNat developer

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) has announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2021 on Thursday for their contributions to science and research.

The awards were presented at a function held virtually and noted virologist Gagandeep Kang was the Chief Guest.

The awards were given for six categories: engineering & computer science, mathematical sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, humanities and social sciences.

Dr Chandrasekhar Nair won the Infosys Prize for Engineering & Computer Science for his development and commercialisation of TrueNat, a new point-of-care testing platform for PCR based medical diagnostics.

For the mathematical sciences category, the winner was Dr Neeraj Kayal of Microsoft Research, Bengaluru, for his outstanding contributions to Computational Complexity.

For physical sciences, the winner was Prof. Bedangadas Mohanty for investigations of the nuclear force.

Dr Mahesh Sankaran has won the award for the life sciences category, in recognition of his pioneering work on the ecology of tropical savannah ecosystems.

Noted historian Dr Angela Barreto Xavier won the award for the humanities category, in recognition for her analysis of conversion and violence in the Portuguese empire in India, especially Goa.

Dr Pratiksha Baxi won the social sciences award for her pioneering work on sexual violence and jurisprudence. The award comprises a gold medal, a citation and a prize purse of $100,000.