Two women scientists – Manjula Reddy of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and Sunita Sarawagi of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay -- are among six winners of this year’s prestigious Infosys Prize.

The winners of Infosys Prize, which carried the highest prize money for any science award in India, were announced on Thursday at a function attended by among others by top Infosys honchos such as N R Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal. The function was also graced by most of the jury members who selected the winners.

While Reddy, who works to understand cell wall growth of bacteria won the prize for biological sciences, Sarawagi bagged the award in engineering and computer sciences category for her pioneering work in developing information extraction techniques for unstructured data.

Manu Davadevan of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the IIT Mandi, one among the newly-established IITs, won the Infosys Prize for Humanities for his work on pre-modern South India. According to the jury, his book on pre-history of Hinduism offers a powerful and refreshing approach to the cultural history of India.

The Infosys Prize for physical sciences was awarded to G Mugesh of Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru for his work on chemical synthesis of small molecules and nanomaterials for biomedical applications. His work in the past has led to better understanding of the role played by trace elements such as selenium and iodine in thyroid hormone activation and metabolism.

Siddhartha Mishra of ETH Zurich was chosen for Infosys Prize for mathematical sciences, while anthropologist Anand Pandian of the Johns Hopkins University in the US got the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences for his work on ethics, selfhood and the creative process.

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