Infosys aims at spreading culture of science & research

SD Shibulal

President, Board of Trustees, ISF,

Talks to Sanjeev Sharma

The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF), a not-for-profit trust, was set up in February 2009 by Infosys and some of its trustees. With over Rs 100-crore corpus today, the foundation aims at inspiring young minds to take up scientific research as a career option. In an interview, SD Shibulal, president, Board of Trustees, ISF, talks of initiatives such as the Infosys Prize, an annual award instituted to honour outstanding achievements of researchers and scientists. 

How the Infosys Science Foundation came into existence?

Infosys has always believed in a strong industry-academia partnership for the advancement of academic research in the country. With this intent, we instituted the Infosys Mathematics Prize in collaboration with the National Institute of Advanced Studies  in 2008.

After the success of the Infosys Mathematics Prize, the former Board of Directors at Infosys and some senior management decided to expand the scope of the award to other science fields to recognise the efforts of the larger Indian science fraternity. Hence, in February 2009, Infosys set up the Infosys Science Foundation with a corpus of Rs 45 crore contributed by Infosys executive board members and an annual grant from Infosys Ltd. Today, the corpus stands at over Rs 100 crore.

The award honours researchers (connected to India) in six categories —engineering and computer science, humanities, life sciences, mathematical sciences, physical Sciences and social sciences. It is amongst the biggest honour (in terms of prize money) in India carrying a cash award of Rs 65 lakh, a citation certificate and a gold medallion.

What is the objective of ISF?

In any debate on the state of scientific research in India, most people will agree that we need to improve the quality of our output in this area. Most will also agree that we have to make research an attractive and viable career option for future generations.

The award intends to celebrate success in scientific research and stand as a marker of excellence in research. Initiatives such as the Infosys Prize will certainly help in boosting the confidence of researchers across pure and social sciences and related branches, thus creating role models in this field.

What is the organisational structure of the ISF?

The ISF is governed by nine trustees and managed by a programme team. Six jury chairs, along with panels of eminent academicians and subject-matter experts from around the world, review the work of nominees to choose six winners. Trustees of the ISF for 2015 include NR Narayana Murthy, Srinath Batni, K Dinesh, S Gopalakrishnan, KV Kamath, TV Mohandas Pai, Vishal Sikka and V Balakrishnan.

What has been the response for ISF initiatives?

The response has been very promising. We started out with five categories of prizes and added humanities as the sixth category in 2012. In a span of six years, the Infosys Prize has been successful in recognising and awarding 37 researchers and scientists for their contribution to their fields of expertise.

We continue to establish multilateral conversations with a wider audience about science in India through the Infosys Science Foundation Lecture series introduced in 2011. These public talks have gained great popularity within the research fraternity and cover not just top institutes in Metros, but extend to small towns as well.