Hyderabad, Dec 2: India churns out around seven lakh engineers every year. And yet how many of them are actually good enough to win some of the prestigious domestic and global awards?The issue has come to the forefront with Infosys Technologies reportedly having failed to find a worthy candidate for its Infosys Engineering Science Prize-2009.The company has decided not to give the prize in that category to anyone this year. A top Infosys official said here on Wednesday that 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 took the unanimous decision not to award the prize for the engineering sciences discipline this year, he explained.Infosys Science Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by Infosys Technologies. The company has named three scientists and two academic experts as winners of Infosys Prize 2009 for outstanding contributions to scientific research.The winner in physical sciences is Mr Thanu Padmanabhan of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophyics, Pune, in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein's theory of gravity in the context of thermodynamics.
For mathematical sciences, Mr Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute at Allahabad was given the prize in recognition for his contributions to mathematical physics. For life sciences, Dr K Vijay Raghavan of the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore got the award.The winner in the social sciences and economics category is Mr Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his contribution to the economic theory of development. Ms Upinder Singh of the University of Delhi won an award for her contribution as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India.