- Exceptional scholars honored for their extraordinary contributions to scientific research in India in six categories
- Absurdly fast algorithms, health economics, electrochemical fertilizer production, Prakrit poetics among research awarded Infosys Prize 2025
Dehradun : The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) today, announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2025 in six categories—Economics, Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, and Physical Sciences. Since its inception in 2009, the Infosys Prize has honored the remarkable accomplishments of individuals whose research and scholarship significantly impact India. The prize for each category comprises a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000 (or its equivalent in INR).
The laureates of Infosys Prize 2025 were selected by an international panel of jurors comprising renowned scholars and experts. Since its inception, the ISF has recognized groundbreaking research and scholarship that have influenced various aspects of human life. From 2024, the prize has shifted focus to honor researchers under the age of 40, emphasizing the need for early recognition of exceptional talent. This encouragement of early career researchers will serve as an inspiration for the next generation of scholars and innovators.
The winners of the Infosys Prize 2025 were announced by the trustees of ISF — Mr. K. Dinesh (President, Board of Trustees), Mr. Narayana Murthy, Mr. Srinath Batni, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Dr. Pratima Murthy, and Mr. S. D. Shibulal. The other trustees of ISF — Mr. Mohandas Pai, Mr. Nandan Nilekani, and Mr. Salil Parekh — extended their congratulations to this year’s recipients.
The Infosys Prize remains the largest award in India that acknowledges excellence in science and research. In addition, laureates of the Infosys Prize have gone on to receive several prestigious international awards, including the Nobel Prize (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo), the Fields medal (Manjul Bhargava and Akshay Venkatesh), the Dan David Prize (Sanjay Subrahmanyam), the MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant and British Academy Book Prize (Sunil Amrith), the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (Ashoke Sen), and the Marconi Prize (Hari Balakrishnan). Several laureates have been elected fellows of the Royal Society, among them Gagandeep Kang, who became the first Indian woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
- Dinesh, President – Board of Trustees, Infosys Science Foundation, said, “I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the winners of the Infosys Prize 2025, whose achievements reflect the vital connection between research, science, and society, inspiring the next generation of innovators. The Infosys Prize continues to embody our belief that research and science are cornerstones of human progress. It reflects the Foundation’s enduring commitment to nurturing a culture that drives innovation and broadens understanding across disciplines.”
The winners of the Infosys Prize 2025 in the six categories are:
Economics
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Economics is awarded to Nikhil Agarwal, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his pioneering contributions to market design, including the development and implementation of pathbreaking methodology for empirical studies of allocation mechanisms, including school choice, medical residency, and kidney exchanges. Much of economics assumes that the invisible hand of the market brings about prices where demand equals supply. While this is likely true for apples and oranges, this is not the way those needing kidneys find those willing to supply kidneys, or students seeking college admission find the college that will admit them. These matching problems are hugely important but inadequately understood. Agarwal’s work has transformed this rudimentary literature into one anchored in data, providing new insights into policy design.
Engineering and Computer Science
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Engineering and Computer Science is awarded to Sushant Sachdeva, Associate Professor (CSC) of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Toronto, for his deep insights into mathematical optimization and the resolution of longstanding open questions in algorithmic theory that has established new standards on achievable performance in computational problems affecting information flows across societal lifelines, including the internet, transportation, and communication networks. He is a pioneer in theoretical computer science whose fundamental contributions have profoundly impacted many algorithmic challenges underlying modern society.
Humanities and Social Sciences
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Humanities and Social Sciences is awarded to Andrew Ollett, Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, who is the world’s foremost scholar of the Prakrit languages in this generation. His book, Language of the Snakes, is a magisterial analysis of the cultural roles of Prakrit in tandem with Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars over the last two thousand years. Andrew Ollett’s linguistic mastery and knowledge is breathtaking, ranging from detailed contributions to the study of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Kannada, Tamil, Old Javanese, and Chinese, in addition to his knowledge of the modern European languages and his training in Greek and Latin. Scholarship such as Ollett’s in Sanskrit literature and other Indian languages helps us understand the remarkable cosmopolitan reach of Indian culture in places as distant as the farthest corners of Southeast Asia.
Life Sciences
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Life Sciences is awarded to Anjana Badrinarayanan, Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, for her pioneering contributions to understanding mechanisms of genome maintenance and repair. Through innovative live-cell imaging combined with genetic and cell biological approaches, her work has revealed fundamental principles of how DNA damage is repaired, demonstrated mutagenesis in non-dividing cells, and identified novel pathways of mitochondrial DNA damage responses, illuminating principles central to life and evolution. By uncovering universal strategies that cells use to safeguard their genomes, she has profoundly advanced the fields of genome and microbial biology, establishing new directions for research into genome stability and cellular resilience.
Mathematical Sciences
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Mathematical Sciences is awarded to Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the School of Mathematics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, for his powerful and original work that links two distinct areas of mathematics—the dynamics of Kleinian group actions and the iteration of holomorphic and anti-holomorphic maps in complex dynamics. His results have reshaped our understanding of conformal dynamics, an area of study that has important implications across physics, fluid dynamics, and even data science.
Physical Sciences
The Infosys Prize 2025 in Physical Sciences is awarded to Karthish Manthiram, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for his pioneering work on sustainable electrochemical routes to essential chemicals. His breakthroughs in lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis and oxygen-atom transfer catalysis have transformed our understanding of electrified chemical manufacturing, demonstrating how renewable electricity can drive selective, efficient synthesis of chemicals that are fundamental to agriculture and industry.
