India may be one of the largest producers of engineers in the world but when Infosys Technologies looked around for a worthy candidate for its Infosys Engineering Science Prize 2009, it could not find one. And so it has decided not to give the prize in that category to anyone this year.
“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," said SD Shibulal, chief operating officer (COO) of Infosys, who is one of the trustees of Infosys Science Foundation.
Infosys Prize, which is Rs 50 lakh per category, is awarded to Indian or non-Indian scientists for their outstanding contributions to India’s research and development (R&D) in five areas —physical sciences, mathematical sciences, life sciences, social sciences (economics and history) and engineering sciences.
As per the criteria set by Infosys, the research has to be carried out in India. Union minister of human resource development (HRD) Kapil Sibal, who was the chief guest of the event via video conferencing, on Monday suggested that the criteria could be relaxed slightly by including work of scientists for India done outside the country too.
To this, NR Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys, assured that the board of trustees would consider his recommendation in their next meeting to be held in February. K Vijay Raghavan the winner of the prize in the life sciences category is a scientist at the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore.
